Defendant in lawsuit says his email was hacked.
Someone duped domain name brokerage VPN.com out of $250,000. But whodunit?
VPN.com sued “George Dikian,” a pseudonymous domain investor, last year claiming that he had defrauded VPN.com.
In the lawsuit, VPN.com hinted that Dikian might argue his email account was hacked to perpetrate the scheme. Now, Dikian has claimed just that.
In a recent motion, Dikian claimed that “two expert witnesses have confirmed that [Dikian’s] Yahoo! Mail account listed in public WHOIS records (g.dikian @ yahoo.com) was hacked into by a criminal that logged into that account from European service providers, in order to perpetrate the alleged fraud on Plaintiff.”
The claim is part of a request (pdf) by Dikian to not allow VPN.com to disclose his real name in any court filings. VPN.com is aware of his name, thanks to some subpoenas. Dikian said he’s been using his alias for 20 years to protect his privacy and property and doesn’t want it disclosed. He’s asking the court to allow him to continue the case using his pseudonym.
Soooo… They are also saying icann’s rule about fake whois info doesn’t apply to anyone as long as the person uses the word “pseudonym” instead of “fake”?
I suspect the owners account probably was hacked and wouldn’t surprise me if VPN were going after the wrong person given Gargiulo’s level of stupidity and greed after reading the facts. VPN deserve to lose the case purely on the basis of ethics and Gargiulo is the type of broker we don’t need in the industry.
“It appears that VPN played both sides of the transaction. Brokers typically work for one party or another and take a commission from who they represent. In this case, VPN found that the seller was willing to take $2.25 million and the buyer was willing to pay $4.4 million. So VPN would pocket $2.15 million.”