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Mugshots.com defendants face arraignment later this month

by — Policy & Law 35 Comments

Defendants are due in Los Angeles courtroom on June 29 for arraignment.

Sahar Sarid’s mugshot after being arrested in Florida. He faces arraignment in California later this month.

The defendants in a criminal case against Mugshots.com’s owners face arraignment on June 29, according to the Superior Court of California website.

Domain investor Sahar Sarid is among the four people named in the complaint. He faced extradition to California to face the charges brought by the Attorney General there. The extradition hearing in Florida was dropped, apparently after Sarid turned himself in in California.

Sarid faces 51 counts including extortion, money laundering, and identity theft. The Attorney General alleges that he and the other defendants extorted people by charging them to have their mugshot and arrest records removed from the website in violation of the law.

The Mugshots.com website does not currently resolve.

Sahar Sarid arrested on charges related to Mugshots.com

by — Policy & Law 61 Comments

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.

Changes in Store for Bido Auction Platform

by — Services 8 Comments

I predict three major changes at domain auction house Bido.

A week ago I wrote about the lack of high quality domain names for sale at Bido. Others agreed, and Bido co-founder Sahar Sarid chimed in. While Sarid was somewhat coy about planned changes at Bido, he dropped several hints. After reading his comments on Domain Name Wire and his five posts about accurate domain pricing on his blog, here’s what I think is in store for the site:

1. More than one domain a day. I’m not sure if this means unlimited or ten, but I suspect it will increase from the current one-a-day auction format.

2. Perhaps relaxing of $1 starting price, but a penalty if the domain doesn’t sell (see #3)

3. Incentives for sellers to submit quality domains.

The third change warrants more attention. How do you get sellers to submit quality domain names and not have to wade through thousands of worth(less) domains? I’ve written before about seller submission bias and how to solve it with economic penalties (see How to Solve Auction Submission Bias with Financial Incentives).

I can think of many options for Bido.

One is to put the onus for quality on the buyers by using the wisdom of the crowd to select domains. But Sarid’s posts seem to pin responsibility on sellers.

If you pin it on sellers, there are many approaches.

1. Refundable listing fees – charge a fee per domain that is refunded if the domain receives 2 or more bids.

2. Graduated listing fees for more promotion – the more the seller pays, the higher his or her domain shows up on the bidding list for the day.

3. Traditional listing fees, perhaps based on starting price.

There are challenges and benefits to each of these approaches. Obviously they all require proving that your auction platform attracts bidders.

Bido.com Crashes Again

by — Domain Sales 6 Comments

Bido crashes during second auction for FixedLoans.com.

Sahar Sarid’s blog posts tell it all. Yesterday his post was titled “Bido is Down, But Not For Long!”. Today’s post: “Bido Auctions No More (For Now)“.

For the second straight day, Bido crashed during the auction for FixedLoans.com. I had reasonable success logging in and watching the auction for the first 50 minutes, but then I just got a blank screen after that.

When I was finally able to access the site again, it read “no auctions”. The Auction History link showed a few auctions closed, all dated in 1969 (I had no idea Bido was that old!). It looked like FixedLoans.com sold in the neighborhood of $5,500, but that was actually the last bid received before the system went down.

It’s really a shame that Bido is having these technical difficulties. Having launched a web application myself, it seems that most of the trouble comes in the first week or two. Bido aced the launch test, but apparently is having difficulty with the scalability test.

I’m no techie, but perhaps it’s because you need to be logged in through the SSL to view the auctions. Perhaps a limitation there? Auctions are hard to scale, and perhaps the security layer adds to that.

Regardless, let’s hope that Sahar and team can get Bido back up soon. It is turning into a great venue for domain sales.

Bido: FixedLoans.com Auction and New Chat Feature

by — Domain Sales 2 Comments

Domain sold at previous TRAFFIC auction on the block at Bido, Bido Chat in the works.

Bido’s auction on Wednesday will be for FixedLoans.com. This will be an interesting auction to watch because the domain was sold at a TRAFFIC conference in 2006 for $10,000.

Some may view this auction as a test of Bido’s clout in the domain auction business, but it could really go either way. If it sells for more than $10,000 it could be because fixed loans are getting a lot more attention now than two years ago, or it could be because Bido delivered good buyers. If it sells for less than $10,000, it could be because the domain market is softening.

The domain was mentioned in David Kesmodel’s The Domain Game book.

The auction will start at 1PM EDT Wednesday and last for one hour.

In other Bido news, it appears that a chat feature is in the works. Sahar Sarid’s Facebook profile has an update on Tuesday that reads “Sahar Sarid is testing Bido.com’s new feature: Chat!”. It’s not clear yet how this will be implemented, but Bido is doing a good job pulling together a community around domain auctions. (Thanks to a reader for the tip.)