Well known online marketer starts a blog that uses his inmate number.
You might not know Shawn Hogan by name, but it’s possible you’ve heard about him.
He runs the Digital Point marketing forum. He also made a mint from affiliate marketing.
How he made much of that money in affiliate marketing ended up landing him in prison. He made tens of millions of dollars from eBay’s affiliate program, but eBay later said that he did it by cookie stuffing.
Hogan alleged that eBay knew exactly how he was making money all along.
He ended up facing criminal charges and did a plea bargain that sends him to prison for 5 months.
Before heading to prison, Hogan registered his inmate number 13411-111.com as a domain name and blogged a bit. His blog also has instructions for how to reach him while he’s locked up.
Inmate numbers as domain names. Now that’s a market I’ve never thought of.
Joseph Peterson says
When the history of the domain industry is written, this anecdote will be an inmate.
chad says
I sold digitalpoint.com back in the day like 1999-2,000 ish., man time flies..I watched digitalpoint.com for first couple years then lost track.. WOW, 5 months of jail time..
Rob says
typical f*ing corrupt criminal world, most of all the courts.
he takes tens of millions and gets 5 months.
if i so much a s stole a $10,000 car i would probably get a year.
no wonder crime is rife throughout the world… the upper echelon (criminals) do it on a massive scale, so a few tens of millions is not worth punishing all that much. but then he’s really one of them too so they go lightly on him. (i wonder how much he paid on the side to various persons in the legal profession!?!?) but god help the people who aren’t criminals.