California AG files criminal charges against Sarid and three other people it says were behind extortion scheme.
The alleged owners of Mugshots.com might find their own mugshots on the site soon.
This includes domain name investor Sahar Sarid.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced charges of extortion, money laundering, and identity theft against the four alleged owners yesterday. Sarid was arrested in Florida and his mugshot is available here.
According to the Attorney General, Mugshots.com posts mugshots of people who are arrested. If they want the mugshot removed they have to pay a fee, even if they were never charged or were arrested in error.
Sarid is based in Florida and the state of California wants to extradite him to California to face the charges.
Reminds me of new tld extortion from TM holders.
Question: Will they keep him in the ”Hall of Fame“ of not?
http://www.dnjournal.com/events/photos/2010-traffic-miami/sarid-king.jpg
My only question – Would you consider an orange jumpsuit and 3/meals a day with a solid roof over your head, an update or a downgrade? I say upgrade.
“Eight years ago Sahar Sarid was working on an ice cream truck and sharing a mobile home with his sister in Houston, Texas.”
@Domain, Where did you get that info? Might be true but he owned Spyware.com at one time, maybe still does, and said he made over a million on the traffic alone.
Some time ago he might have been poor, but he’s made a lot of money with domains. The money from Mugshots.com probably didn’t have a meaningful impact on his standard of living. That makes the entire situation even more sad.
(Mangolia, Texas) is where he lived when he first started in the domain industry. 1999
I fully expected Adam Dicker to be listed as one of the owners of Mugshots.
I think Dicker was
http://www.removemugshots.com/
LOL
I wonder the same thing, why wasn’t Adam Dicker picked up as well? Maybe because he is Canadian and is hardly to extradite?
because I am not involved. Nothing to do with anything else.
Adam, so you didn’t run unpublishmugshots.com and weren’t in business with Sahar?
You said you making $150k/mo from your “reputation repair” business in a domain sherpa interview and people are talking for years about your relationship to mugshots.com (including ripoff report complaints).
Great news! it’s JAIL TIME for some of the criminals in the domain industry. But that’s just the start … :)) …
Can it get any worse than jail time?
yes, they may run into someone they featured and get themselves shanked
Let’s all tweet this and charge em to delete our tweets. 🙂
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Ooooo, that felt soooooo good.
A long time coming but really worth the wait.
It takes this to drag you out of your cave ?
You haven’t seen my cave, obviously. Invitation is open as always.
Wish Sahar all the best with this. Like all business sometimes we bend the rules to suit our strategy. Lets hope they all walk away free from this and learn from it. Good luck Sahar.
“we bend the rules”
That’s not bending the rules, those are crimes.
Criminal laws are not here to be bend “to suit your strategy” but to regulate life in our society. And criminal businesses must be shut down and criminals behind them jailed (or worse) and fined.
Weird, disrespectful idea you have about laws.
Supporting criminals qualifies you … shame on you.
Typo, it’s “defines you”, not “qualifies you”. 🙂
Are you ‘aving a laugh?
Hope to see your mugshot soon
They’re thumbing their noses at prosecutors by keeping the website active.
To be fair, Sahar is still in jail. Pretty hard to shut down a site while you’re in jail!
If he made all that money from domains that you say he did, why is he still in jail and not made bail? I never bought into the hype.
There are a number of potential reasons he hasn’t posted bail. One is that California is trying to extradite him. I’m not sure if that makes it harder to post bail. Maybe he needs to wait for a prelim hearing.
Also, I assume most bond bail services don’t handle bonds this high. If he has the money, he might need to liquidate some assets to get it. That’s not very easy, especially if you’re the only one with keys to the accounts.
@tony No doubt he made miillions off domain sales. leasing, and PPC revenue. Its no hype.
clearly there are people updating it and linking news stories to the mugshot over the past couple of days
Yeah, but has Sahar’s photo appeared yet? I wanna get a screenshot to stick on my office wall.
This is so ugly. I wonder who he’ll sell out to help himself. He’s obviously is low on scruples. Bet there are lots of old time domain guys waiting for a knock on their door!
I couldn’t see how this biz practice was legal.
Publishing mugshots (ok, but seems unethical), but soliciting monies to remove the photo(s) from the site(s)? Pretty dodgy IMO
Didn’t Sahar have his own domain blog back in the day?
It seems a lot of well-known domain investors who did well in the early aughts have had legal issues in recent years.
ask Jeff Bezos why Amazon hosts the website. This is what the domain registar claims ( fabulous.com)
This is no different then RipOffReport.com – anyone can file a report on any business. They have high rankings so when you google the business the false report is listed. RipOffReport.com then charges thousands to remove the report.
Yelp and the review sites are of the same vein. You can create a dummy account and write bogus reviews about any business.
I think user generated content such as reviews and complaints are viewed differently than actual “government provided” information by many people.
At least Rip Off Reports lets you post a rebuttal. But charging thousands to remove a report is indeed a rip-off 🙂
Update Us…
WHO are ALL Four (+) of the Owners ??
What else do we know about each of those folks ??
http://fljusticematters.blogspot.com/
and they have refuse to comply with Florida’s new mugshot law that went into effect today July 1
So there is a website where you can check if someone you are about to date or to entrust your kid to has a criminal record, easily and for free and everyone is more concerned with the fact that they were asking money to take those off??
Problem is a county can list a record and then they scrape it. Guy goes to court and charges are dropped so it comes off the county site but lives forever on mugshots unless you pay their extortion fee. So if a 17 year old kid gets arrested for something minor and it’s resolved from the county site should it live forever on a third party site=No If you can scrape for free better learn how to unscrape as well or you’re damaging a kid for life for something minor.
Many of the people on this site do not have a criminal record. They were wrongfully arrested or charges were dropped. Mugshots wouldn’t remove these people unless they paid a fee, according to the complaint.
This is unsubstantiated, but I also heard that once you paid the fee they would remove you from Mugshots but you’d still be up on one of their other nearly identical sites. Never ending cascade of sites and fees to scrub your non-existent record.
Its not unsubstantiated. It’s a fact I f you were arrested and found not guilty or the charges were dropped mugshots.com will not remove your listing unless you pay them the fee
I am sorry to hear about Sahar problems.
I learned a long time ago, don’t kick someone when they are down.
It is ironic that the Calif. Attorney General is going after these guys considering all of the problems Calif has within their own state borders.
To bad Sahar never learned that lesson. He will be showering now with many of those he kicked when they were down.
Bubba, you nailed it. I couldn’t have said it better.
Karma never sleeps.
Their coming to get you Adam Dicker. Once they analyze all the data, you will be implicated as well. You like Sahar, will go in an as*hole and come out a manhole. Enjoy the man cave bro, Karma is coming to get you.
Do you mean his a$$hole will be the size of a manhole?
These are serious charges. Bail is set at almost 2 million USD.
Many people who were exonerated of charges still remain on these mugshots sites, which have resulted in loss of jobs and public shaming for innocent people. (I had a friend who broke up with his GF. Angered and embittered, the ex GF filed all kinds of false charges against her ex BF; she later recanted these accusations, and the charges subsequently were dropped. My friend, who was never found guilty of any crimes, still remains on some “Mugshot” sites, despite having paid thousands of USD to remove his photos from these sites.
To end up in prison with inmates Sahar and his colleagues may have publicly shamed on the Internet could result in hard time and horrific stuff.
I imagine for someone whose being inside 5+ years, Sahar could be made to look quite fetching with the right lipstick shade.
Those of you with sympathy for him are currently helping him scrape up the bail money, I’m sure.
My response from onlinedomain.com blog: Also read my reply to Whizzbang’s Topic Thread in News Section.
Karma in full circle. Told lots of folks over the years Sahar Sarid was a con artist and crook and not to be trusted. In late 1999 Sahar, Jeff bvhavanie and I became legal partners under global domains LLC and registered a multimillion dollar portfolio of expired/dropped domains. Sales were slow at first with lots of interest because of our asking prices, until we got a 2 character . Com on the drop and sold for $200k within days. That’s when all went downhill and Jeff and Sahar illegally terminated partnership with me as they remained partners with full portfolio.
Didn’t have the funds to hire proper legal counsel, so technically assume legally partners still today with domain portfolio and all earned ppc since late 1999. Unfortunately, still do not have the funds to fight this legal battle for my portion of the multimillion dollar portfolio. Money created greed and that produces crooks and con artist. Still have all documentation with list of names till that point, however not a list of all others for past 18yrs.
Notice how quite the domain blogs and industry are about this big news article? Completely ignored……..Karma was long over due for Sahar, Jeff, kismore, and many more not named yet. Like his family mother and sister. Now maybe folks will agree with what I said many times over the years about Sahar Saris, regardless of the bs fluff article on dnjournal.com published. Everyone looking at him as an icon in industry. Still looking for a top IP lawyer to assist with pursing this multi million dollar case that would be worth their time with lawsuit. There are many other unpublished stories of scandals, crooks, and cons in the domain industry never published. Feel free to email for detailed info or want to publish a full factual article on my comment here with Sahar Sarid and Jeff Bvhanie. Kishmore bvhavanie is Jeff’s brother who were living in Hong Kong back then and Sahar was living outside of Houston (Mangolia, Texas).
Thanks Konstantinos for being the first one publishing this article and letting me post how I was victimized criminally by Sahar Sarid and Kismore “Jeff” Bvhavanie.
I can be emailed at texmexi (@) yahoo.com if interested in publishing another factual criminal multi million dollar business crime with my story involving Kismore aka Jeff Bhavanie, and Sahar Sarid on my posting above with documentation and full list of names verifying value of portfolio alone at that stage, not including PPC revenue and Domain Sales completed.
In addition, Criminal/Business/IP Lawyers, etc can email me directly if interested in pursuing lawsuit on this multi million dollar domain portfolio, domain sales completed, and PPC revenue past 18yrs. Lawsuit has solid foundation and documentation to be awarded punitive damages, domain portfolio, and lost revenue. Is there a statue of Limitations for such criminal/business lawsuit cases, if any?
That’s terrible. I’m shocked you couldn’t find an attorney back in the day to do this on a contingency basis. Even then, it was quite obvious how much these names are worth. Unfortunately, I believe the statute of limitations may have run out, but I hope I’m wrong.
I wouldn’t say that the domain industry has completely ignored this event. DNJournal, Domain Name Wire and Online Domain have all headlined the story.
Dicker is as dirty as they get. He avoided “smart” guys unless they were in bed with him and preyed on newbies and dreamers.
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/142-2003/6553-23-satellite-piracy-charges-laid.html
Now if this ain’t Karma: https://florida.arrests.org/search.php?fname=Sahar&lname=Sarid&fpartial=True
Drain the swamp!!
The monthly hosting and server bills for that site must have been pretty high.
It looks like the company was operating out of an upscale locale, Lighthouse Point, in South Florida, close to Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale and Delray Beach.
If Sahar and his partners received any “funding” help for the Mugshots operations, they could give up any potential “silent partners” to shave off some prison time.
Ugly situation all around. & most likely there will be many lawsuits filed by persons shamed on the site over the years.
No honor among thieves. Those that conspired with them will be given up. Count on that. They want company in prison. Whoever they owners turn out to be, they should be sued for every penny they have. If Sahar and his family all get locked up, then I have no sympathy. But, I do feel sorry for his dogs. They did nothing and even they have to pay a price of someone finding a new home for them.
3 comments….
– innocent until proven guilty…
– let ye who are without sin cast the first stone…
– i will still call him friend and love him regardless the outcome
Then go visit him and if you really love him you’d smuggle in a tube of KY cos he’s gonna need it!
I’m happy to see that mugshots.com is finally shut down and I’m pleased to hear of the arrests. I am however disappointed that co-conspirator Kelly Joe Ellis of Carthage, MO didn’t get arrested yet. This scum runs about 60 websites, uses about 5 different names including Chris Ellis. Kelly Ellis is the sole owner of Cleansearch.net and removearrest.com. Ellis worked very closely with the mugshots.com criminals and cleansearch is even mentioned 3 times in the CA Attorney General’s 29 page affidavit against the mugshots.com guys.
Ellis also operated a few of his own mugshot sites and used his cleansearch company to do the removals, this is pure fraud, extortion and money laundering!
He’s doing the same with his other site bankruptreport.com, he was charging $149 to remove bankrupt records from his site using his other other company cleansearch. He has removed all pricing from bankruptreports site since the arrest of the mugshots.com guys.
Anybody who has ever paid cleansearch/remove arrest for any mugshot or bankruptcy record removal should contact their Attorney General’s office in their state. This is especially true for any California resident! Enough of these complaints will result in criminal action being taken against Ellis.
Ellis is a sneaky piece of scum and he seriously needs to be arrested. I know his days are numbered and it will be interesting to see what happens with the mugshot industry, I’ve noticed most mugshot sites including mugshots.com have already shut down and there’s only a few similar sites still operating. I think the mugshot industry just died! 🙂
mugshots.com is not shutdown by any means they are still up and running.
In regards to the new Florida mugshot law taking effect July 1, they have already skirted that by stating they will no longer charge a depublishing fee so they will be exempt from that law and the California law Looks like they will be going for the advertising and the click.
See https://mugshots.com/unpublishing-guidelines.html for their new policies taking effect July 1.
As for those found not guilty or had their charges dismissed it looks as if they will even refuse to move those mugshot records and simply place a label somewhere on the page which states the disposition This update can be done at their leisure.
Pretty crappy of them and they require documentation signed by a judge. I imagine that would be difficult to obtain on a matter years old .here’s policy in respect to innocent persons
FAVORABLE DISPOSITION – NOT GUILTY, DISMISSSAL, ACQUITTED, EXONERATED, NOLLE PROSEQUI, ADJUDICATION WITHELD, NO FILE – ETC
If you have had a favorable disposition your case can be updated free of charge on the Mugshots.com Database. You can submit the court documentation (disposition documentation must be signed by a judge and sealed by court and be legible) to docverify1@gmail.com for consideration. The Mugshots.com Database fields these requests on a first come first serve basis and does not guarantee the timeliness of the update. This process can take 6-8 weeks. Non-legible documents will be discarded and no notification as to update will be provided. Please take your time and submit the documentation in good order and your arrest record will be updated free of charge. Your disposition will be prominently displayed on all pages relating to your arrest.
This is the guy who used to log in to Rick’s old board and other forums posting bragging pseudo questions like “I’m thinking of buying a 250ft ocean going yacht and can’t decide on whether it should have one helipad on it, or two, any suggestions folks?” and would turn up at domain events with tired looking Lambos and other marques that had been rented by the day.