But creditors aren’t happy with the pace as they are still owed money.
Domain name registrar Epik continues to dig itself out of a financial hole, but new problems continue to pop up.
The registrar offers a type of store credit called Masterbucks along with an in-house escrow service. Epik was using money from both of these to fund its operations rather than keeping the funds in separate bank accounts. The company also didn’t have an escrow license.
It wasn’t apparent that the money was being used to fund operations (or otherwise unavailable) until customers became spooked that they wouldn’t be able to get their money back. That created what amounted to a run on the bank — and Epik didn’t have the funds to pay back all of its customers.
Epik brought in new management in September that is chipping away at these debts, but it doesn’t have the cash on hand to fund operations and make everyone whole today. It’s in triage mode, taking any new profits that come in and paying them out as available.
Recently, the company sent an email to some customers stating:
When new management took over Masterbucks, the balance was approximately 4.5 million dollars. Through our dedicated and expeditious efforts, the new management team has brought that number down to just over $800k and change.
But last week, a representative of domain seller DomainEmpire posted a review on TrustPilot saying it has a balance of $1.5 million in Masterbucks that it has not been able to withdraw. It accrued this money from domain sales, it stated.
According to DomainEmpire, former Epik CEO Rob Monster offered it 6% annual interest if it kept its money in Masterbucks.
I asked new CEO Brian Royce yesterday via email about DomainEmpire’s $1.5 million debt. He said the number was news to him. He also said that the $800k quoted in the email was no longer correct even without the DomainEmpire number, because he just became aware of another debt of over $300,000 that wasn’t in Masterbucks, bringing the total (without DomainEmpire) to $1.1 million.
It seems that there is no clear record-keeping for the new management, which adds to the challenge.
More details about the blowup at Epik this year are starting to trickle out. A former contract EVP of Operations for Epik sued the company this year, saying he has not been paid. The case was settled. In a court filing (pdf), an attorney for Epik wrote:
While working for Epik, the Plaintiff began working with one of Epik’s chief customers–JJE. JJE offered and invested into a plan for ownership in Epik. Within a few months, however, JJE changed its position and asked Epik if JJE could divest from their investment in Epik. As an agreement and negotiations between Epik and JJE progressed, JJE broke off from their original offer to Epik and negotiated for a settlement.
Monster had previously said the company received a $32 million investment. That investment didn’t fully come to fruition.
Hear from Epik CEO Brian Royce in DNW Podcast #410, recorded in October.
It seems like investors and customers everywhere are being defrauded. Good grief.
Yes. I am also a customer that has not received my money. I sold my domain for $100K on September 27th, used Epik Escrow and should have had funds transferred to my account as soon as it cleared escrow with a 9% fee, so I am owed $91000.00. Those funds were supposed to be a direct deposit to my bank account. Instead, they moved it to Masterbucks and put Masterbucks on hold so that I cannot get my withdrawal. It has been 60 days and I still cannot get my money. The domain is no longer in my name, and I never received my funds out of escrow.
Reviews can be read on Trust Pilot and also on NamePros regarding Epik Escrow and Masterbucks. There are a lot of victims in this situation. Those were funds I intended to use for retirement. I am 60 years old, and am trying to get some help for my situation, as are others.
When on Earth are the relevant authorities going to look into this mess?
As a reminder, the Washington Attorney General receives consumer complaints and looks for potential patterns of illegal activity
https://www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint
“Whether or not your individual complaint is resolved to your satisfaction, the basic information on your problem will be retained along with all other complaint information we receive. This information helps us to identify patterns of illegal activity which require enforcement action by the Attorney General’s Office. “
Holy crap!
So much to say, but I don’t want to inject myself into this.
WOW
Do a WHOIS search on the domain you sold. Was it purchased by Synergy Technologies (SynergyTech.com)? I have no idea who owns Synergy and am not alleging illegal acts, am just wondering if there’s a coincidence as I recently sold DivorceLaw.com through Epik for about $27,500, with a WHOIS now showing Synergy as the new owner – and with the domain forwarding to what appears to be an affiliate site, which may indicate it was not purchased by a law firm – and am also having to wait a long time for my Masterbucks withdrawal to be processed.
I was also a little puzzled because I initially received two high-five-figure offers for DivorceLaw.com and DebtCollection.com on the same day, about a month before I sold DivorceLaw.com, which seemed to indicate to me that the same person, probably a domain reseller, made both offers. I quoted considerably higher for DebtCollection than DivorceLaw and no follow-up offer for DebtCollection was made.
I may have been a bit paranoid last night, after reading some of the comments. I forgot you can still use the balance in your Masterbucks account to pay for domain purchases and renewals, so I don’t think people should think, at this point, that their funds will be lost. I’m guessing Epik is struggling in large part due to costs incurred as a result of hacking attacks in response to their free-speech policies, which policies I admire – and Rob Monster has been very helpful to me, personally – so I will give them the benefit of the doubt as long as possible.
Please watch my video on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnv24_T8yzw
That why I love domaining
Never a dull moment
I don’t have money stuck in Masterbucks but I’m angry for those who do.
It’s just not good enough for Royce to give those answers… “News to him”? Again, not good enough.
Seriously if I was owed $91k like Kathleen (for 60 days) in this thread or 1.1m (DomainEmpire) I’d be heading over there to literally kick some ass.
If I managed to to come back down from my rage I’d be all over the news, posting like crazy on every board, and starting sh## for every exec and worker in the company until it was resolved. I’d be looking for who their big customers are and I’d be picking them off one by one to convince them to move away and informing them of this crime.
They shouldn’t be able to recover from this and need to be wiped away as an option for domainers and businesses as a registrar and as an “escrow”.
Andrew when you had Royce on your podcast, I think you did a fair job of pushing him about this, and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it seems like he is a Rob Monster puppet – nothing has changed.
They have money, and if not:
1. Where did it go? How big is the fraud? Was it all in crypto and FTX…? Are they biding time until crypto rebounds and they can get the funds back to even and moved over back into the right account?
2. They (Rob Monster) should remortgage his house and make people whole while he waits for cypto to bounce back or for the $ to magically appear from wherever they were moved to.
I just read their wiki page and besides the Oct 2021 hack by anonymous and the hosting of extreme sites, the only reference to Masterbucks was from Oct 2020 when PayPal terminated service due to:
“financial risk concerns relating to the company’s alternative currency called “Masterbucks”, which can be used to purchase services from Epik or can be exchanged for U.S. currency.[40] Mashable alleged that PayPal’s concerns were related to the potential for money laundering, and that PayPal terminated service because Epik allegedly had not taken the proper legal steps to offer an alternate currency after being made aware of the issue a month prior. Mashable also reported that the termination was partly due to concerns by PayPal that the site was encouraging tax evasion by advertising the “tax advantages” of using Masterbucks.[40][41] Epik subsequently published what Mashable described as “a series of unhinged open letters” targeting “PayPal, Hunter Biden, Bloomberg News, and several Avengers” and accusing PayPal of terminating service because they were biased against conservatives.[41]”
Because of the lack of significant resolution with folks’ $ stuck in the system, I think that when Royce went on the DNW podcast talking about how “great Masterbucks is” and how it is going to “grow into a huge part of the business”, this actually now feels like a ponzi scheme that needed a new level of funding to keep it going.
How possible could Royce have spoken so highly about Masterbucks with all of this going on?
Seems like someone should go to jail for this.
Creditors are in a tenuous situation, though. They don’t want people to flee Epik, because if they do, then there won’t be any future profits to pay them back with.
I understand what you’re saying but as a strategy, I think mine is better.
Causing existential problems for the company is more likely to bring about a fair resolution (folks being paid + interest).
Being patient and calm is more likely to fail because the loudest and most aggressive will get paid first, and then there might not be anything left for the patient.
There’s a saying that came up in a recent business podcast I was listening to that people are too quick to act while investing and too slow to act when limiting downside (e.g. liquidating equities). I think it works for this case too, domainers need to be slower about investing or considering escrow proceeds being kept in master bucks, and much quicker to see that their funds could go to zero – and do everything now to get them out to limit downside.
I can assure you that if I was owed money, I definitely wouldn’t be patient and calm 🙂
“ just became aware of another debt of over $300,000 ”
Andrew, I’m puzzled by your use of “dig out” in the headline. It seems the bottom of the hole hasn’t been reached yet, and that the digging is going in another direction.
More like dig in to. Short.
It is all just Rob Monster nonsense, no idea why anyone would have ever trusted this company.
6% interest? This requires equity style returns. 25% at least.
Is this the SBF of domains?
I have no problem with Epik, my portfolio plus 100 domains and I don’t sell domains with them.
Is it MasterBucks or MasterPassingTheBuck? Some of the stories I’ve been reading, including the person that sold a $100k domain name that is still waiting months for her money, is distressing to read.
I am still trying to get my payment for my sales of my domain. I am reaching out on youtube to connect with others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnv24_T8yzw
This is just shameful.
Considering that Epik is still soliciting new escrow business when they are unable or unwilling to pay existing customer debts, I think a more appropriate headline would be “Epik keeps digging”.
I would suggest people watch the video from Kathleen Kalaf. This was a $100,000 transaction.
Epik escrow essentially took payment from the buyer, transferred the domain, then stuck the seller with Masterbucks currency that can’t be withdrawn.
Brad
Is there any reason to be concerned about domains hosted at Epik subject to annual renewal? Seems I recall some registrars in the past that went under, the domains under management would get transferred to another registrar?
Every since RegistryFly, ICANN has put into place protections and failover for registrants, although they aren’t perfect. Registrars are required to escrow their registrant data, so if Epik were to go under, they can transfer the domains to another registrar.
One thing to keep an eye on at any register is that if you renew for multiple years, do they actually do the full renewal or do they renew them one year at a time? If you renew for 5 years, they should renew it with the registry for five years at the same time. I bring this up because Epik sold “forever” registrations that were renewed for the max # of years (typically 10) and then renewed each year after that. Or that’s how they were supposed to work. I wouldn’t count on getting the “forever” out of the deal. It looks like the page on Epik’s site for Forever registrations has been removed, as have the TOS.
Andrew
We took over a failed registrar’s portfolio via the ICANN escrow system a few years ago. It does work – yes, but it’s not perfect. It will all depend on the quality of the data that was submitted and backed up.
Michele
Thanks Michele. As a registrar, you have to escrow your registration data, correct? But some registrars might put good data into escrow.
When I read a news from a domain registrar where I have many domains from my portfolio, I always take precautions to contact Epik support with answers according to my question and I am satisfied.
When there was a problem with Paypal, Godaddy and Afternic, I worried because they were services that I used to pay and sell domains.
When the hacking and loss of the data happened, I got worried again and I had to pay by bank transfer for domain renewal with Epik, they helped me, we couldn’t use the new credit card, when everything was solved, pay calmly with my credit card.
This past month of August I was hospitalized for 23 days, I contacted by email advising of my situation and they came back to help me, thank me and renew domains that interested me using my mobile phone, many are for sale in Dan, Efty, Sedo.
After everything that has happened in Epik at the stage of the
Epik founder and CEO, Mr. Rob Monster, I still can’t understand that there are domain investors who sell domains on Epik with this new Masterbuck system, here I leave a link so you can read everything about Epik and Masterbucks
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/epik-masterbucks/
I will continue with Epik making transfers, domain registrations and dropping those that do not interest me, it is that simple.
To those who continued to do business with Epik after exposed White Christian Nationalist CEO Rob Monster stained the brand by providing secure hosting refuge to deplatformed pariah publishers of hate-fueled, violence-inciting, racially explosive, religiously incendiary, far-White, neo-Nazi and seditious content . . . there’s a 16th century English maxim which forewarns against — and now affirms — the folly of doing business with known scumbags:
❝He that goeth to bed with dogs ariseth with fleas.❞
TRANSLATED: Be cautious of the company you keep. Associating with those of low reputation and absent character may not only lower your own, but also lead you astray by the faulty assumptions, premises and data of the unscrupulous.
I celebrate your predictable misfortune.
You are complicit in every published belch of metastasizing hatred and every resulting act of violence, insurrection and anarchy.
► https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/11/problem-epik-proportions
To me this comment is misinformational hate speech, Andrew, which may be the source of the problem here if such tirades led to Epik having to spend a lot of money defending itself against illegal hacking attacks just to stay online. I’m a strong believer in reasonable freedom of speech, but if this was my forum I’d delete it.
Any company guaranteeing 6% interest is a ponzi scheme!
I sold a lot of names on nameliquidate.com before reading this and realized why no payment has been issued. This whole company is a ponzi scheme and a complete eyesore for the industry.
All of Epik services should be shut down immediately since they’re technically bankrupt and just funneling their revenue to creditors.
Im not sure if I read this right but this has all the finger prints of a Rob Davis, aka @Intelliname aka ** aka ** aka* …over it .
Plaintiff’s actions constitute tortious interference with a business relationship of Epik.
Plaintiff Gado knew of the relationship between Epik and its clients. The actions of Gado caused damages to the relationship between Epik and its clients. Plaintiff Gado’s intentional and unjustified interference with the relationship between Epik and its clients caused damages to Epik.
last week I renewed hundreds of .me domains, I was billed and I get the receipt about renewal, after 2 hours I get the email saying that the domain was deleted and if I want to restore I need to pay $ 90 for each domain, also they deleted 245 premium, aged .com domains with the joke of 30/35 grace period and now they are asking $ 39K to restore the domains, I discovered that some domains was already sold to other customer, and is not finished, this morning I discovered that 5 VERY PREMIUM domains left my account without not even arrived to expiration day, the domain was transferred to registrar key-systems.net , they are stolen domains that are not even get to the expiration day. the domain stolen has the following dns: NS1.NDSPLITTER.COM NS2.NDSPLITTER.COM NS3.NDSPLITTER.COM