SnapNames Employee Caught Bidding on Auctions

Could this be…..Halvarez????

How many millions customers probably overpaid when this person lost auctions? Unbelievable!

These subtle theifs should get at least 20 years of prison, because they will come back and hit you from the back when they’ll have the opportunity.

“This conduct affected a small percentage of SnapNames auctions”….that was said with tongue planted firmly in cheek!

“Bidding affected approximately five percent of total SnapNames auctions since 2005,……..”…that is huge amount of auctions …going on for years!

Stay tuned…more to come.

Paul

Five percent of auctions and one percent of revenue over two years? YIKES!

It’s good they are coming forward but to lead with “This conduct affected a small percentage of SnapNames auctions”?

We are talking thousands of domain auctions and at least tens of thousands of bids. Since the employee lost most of the auctions, that means that the winning bidders paid a higher price in the tens of thousands of dollars.

This is a BIG deal. No?

I can see someone making a bad decision once but over a period of years?

That’s trading on inside information and/or shill bidding or maybe even something criminal? I wonder what else he/she did from the inside. If this person acted on inside information he could have compromised other components of snapnames and perhaps even shared his inside information with outside parties.

I would hope that this employee was fired. Odd that it didn’t say that in the email.

The employee must be fired and even sued for damages.

As far as the rebates, I’m not sure that’s enough. Sounds like we are talking about hundreds or even thousands of compromised auctions.

How will the rebate be determined?

What happens to the domains that the employee won?

I’m guessing if you accept the rebate you won’t be able to sue for damages?

Any mention that the employee was fired?

If snapnames is giving out this information, we should know how they are handling the enforcement of their policies.

Sounds like it could get messy.

@ Rob

The employee was fired – it says it in the statement.

Thanks. I read the article again and still don’t see that.

Halvarez

http://www.domainnamenews.com/news/snapnames-discovers-employee-bidding-domain-names/6479

I should be getting a huge rebate in short time…

That guy was ubiquitous in my BackOrders…

Seriously SnapNames,

This HALVAREZ guy was in almost EVERY auction we were involved in dating back to sometime in 2003/2004.

Most times the “entity” was simply doing nothing, however on plenty of occasions they would also bid as well. Bid well into the $300-$500’s, when it was just us and them chasing a domain. This really sucks for them.

Clearly the have subtracted a number of years in the totals.

Credibility surely down the drain.

Best Regards,

JK
WebContents, Inc

There is definitely more than one account involved in this fraud.

I can count at least 3 accounts at snapnames that drove up prices on my auctions by tens of thousands of dollars in some cases.

halavarez, hidden, vaxcis

1. Who is the source for halvarez being the bidder ID?

2. From http://www.snapnames.com/faq.html :

What methodology did you use to determine the rebate being offered?

SnapNames retained an experienced, independent accounting forensics firm to calculate the amount on a customer-by-customer basis, the precise amounts due to each. In the communication we’ll send through Rust Consulting, we can provide more detail about how figures were calculated.

END

Interesting.

3. Scenarios:

If I was the winning bidder, do they take my high bid all the way down to my bid just under Halvarez (if that’s the bidder)?

What if I lost the auction to Halvarez? Do I get the domain?

Does Halvarez get to keep all his ill gotten domains?

I doubt rebates are going to make everybody happy.

This is appearing to be a REAL mess for snapnames.

Hey, maybe we all have some money AND domains coming our way.

I’ve been an active buyer with snap since like 2001 when the started so it’ll be interesting to see what they offer me.

Class Action …anybody?
I’ll bet somehow they were forced to do this.
Robbie.

domains lost to him should be classified as stolen and be recaimed and given to the losing party.

Is this the only case of such fraudulent activity?

We are big buyers and use quite a bit of competitive intelligence to analyze our prospective purchases including bidders and likelihood of acquisition, we found that on more than one instance the same handle was bidding and running up the price on a number of auctions and shifted a lot of our investment to private acquisitions.

I would venture to say, this is not a one off case of “insider trading” if you would but that there are many cases of such issues particularly in venues such as Snapnames & Namejet.

Transparency has been a cry for such a long time and for reasons non other than preventing this. Rest assured there is a lot more to come of this and of fraud in domain parking, domain brokering and many other facets of this business.

It really is sad, as this only confirms what the outside world thinks of us, this industry has so much potential and is the pipeline of a lot of commerce but stories like this and those that are yet to come may be evidence why we are not taken seriously by the outside investment and marketing world.

@Mike – vaxis = Vertical Axis = Kevin Ham? I think…

This is one of those were you just want to say . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y4ACGsF_PM

LOL

I got the same letter and this portion is telling:

“SnapNames further discovered that, on certain recent and limited occasions, when the employee won an auction, the employee secretly arranged to refund from SnapNames to the fictitious account a portion of the winning bid amount.”

To me the criminal is obviously SnapNames because they are benefiting from the shill bidding and condone this behavior through secret, or not, refunds to the employee.

What about names that were going to auction but suddenly “cancelled” because the owner supposedly renewed? Those messages came from Nelson, and the names ended up with a Sedo parked page, and in a Moniker account.

What happens to the domains now?

Steve,

I wouldn’t be too hard on snapnames. They are a great group of people.

What that is referring to is their affiliate program. This bidder had the balls to bid in auctions AND use his affiliate link to get money back.

The question is why did it take so long for snap to find this guy and has he dealt with anyone else inside or outside of snap?

[...] Activity Uncovered on Snapnames Auction Like many other domain investors who are going through the Snapnames news today, I have been reading through old forum posts and found something that looks potentially even [...]

[...] SnapNames admitted that one of its executives was shill bidding on auctions. 5% of auctions from 2005 – 2007 were affected, the company says, and a lesser number since [...]

5% of auctions.

How many auctions does Snapnames have everyday?

Let’s assume 500 auctions per day. That is 25 auctions per day and over 5 years that is 365*25 = 9125 auctions

That may just be a low estimate!

The number of people affected numbers at least in the thousands if not tens of thousands.

Remedy is rediculous.

The moment Halverez entered and auction the auction became poisoned.

Then, any run ups towards the end due to Halverez should result in a refund of the bid of the PREVIOUS bidder.

Halverez frequently made very significant run ups. Good faith reimbursement are going to have to go a LOT further than what I’m reading here. The fact the Nelson was know to many in the forums, and personally helped many of us as well, makes this far worse than just a bidding issue.

This is yet another example of greed and back stabbing that I find very difficult to comprehend. And it seems to be getting more and more common in society in general.

- Charles Christopher

Did you found this already?

http://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/163933-whats-good-tactics-beating-guy-snapnames.html

[...] SnapNames admitted that one of its executives was shill bidding on auctions. 5% of auctions from 2005 – 2007 were affected, the company says, and a lesser number since [...]

Thomas, Snapnames says there were probably more than 50.000 auctions afected.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/04/domain-industry-rocked-by-shill-auction-bidding-admission/

And now we’re all domain squatters. This coming from the former CEO of Pool.com of all people.

Seems like the shock waves are just getting out to other news sources.

Great. Thanks douche bag at Snapnames whoever you are.

You’re damn right I want a rebate but somehow I don’t think Snap is going to get off that easy.

This could bring down all of Oversee. Of course I don’t want that to happen but one has to ask if this is an isolated case or are there other people acting inappropriately at Oversee?

Why was this person not caught for MANY years?

Unfortunately when you find one mouse, there are more.

Elliot what happened to this post? http://www.elliotsblog.com/deceitful-activity-uncovered-on-auctions-6352

@fizz

After reading Domain Name News and other blogs and forums where the person’s name was mentioned, I thought the name of the person had been confirmed officially. I’ve heard from several people that the person named is correct, but I still don’t feel comfortable posting the person’s name yet until I see official confirmation, so I removed the post.

“And now we’re all domain squatters. This coming from the former CEO of Pool.com of all people.”

That was my greatest fear when I first heard about this. That it goes so far that congress gets involved, or even the UN. And no, I’m not joking.

The desired to control the internet, and thus world commerce, should not be underestimated. People who use this to condemn our industry will do FAR more damage that Nelson. Nelson will just be the “excuse” for more regulations, taxes, etc.

I don’t know how we do this, but we need to. We need to at least keep this to the current issue and bitch slap anybody that fans this fire!

- Charles Christopher

And; whether we like it or not; the mainline media is now off and running with the story:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/11/snapnames_former_exec_bid_up_d.html

Sorry, I just don’t believe it.

I could be wrong, wouldn’t be the first time, but he is
brilliant enough to make (and did) a great legit income;
doesn’t need to ripoff, steal, shill, lie, cheat, whatever.
And certainly doesn’t strike me as greedy or deceitful.

I’ll believe he was the company’s scapegoat until a court
(if it comes to that) proves otherwise.

[...] 今日（米国時間11/4）SnapNamesは、幹部の一人が、オークションでおとり入札を行っていたことを認めた。2005～2007年のオークションの5%に影響を与え、それ以降は減少したと同社は語った。 [...]

[...] to Elliot for posting this on his blog and keeping us all [...]

Well, here’s proof that snapnames owes me money

http://robsequin.com/images/halvarez-bids.gif

This screen cap shows me (I am whatever bidder ID) bidding against Halvarez from $59 to a winning bid of $160 with no other bidders in between. So, there’s $101 coming my way and I know I bid against Halvarez MANY MANY times.

The latest that I can find Halvarez in one of my auctions is from March 2009

http://robsequin.com/images/halvarez-march-2009.gif

If he is bidder ID ppppp too, I’m gonna be getting an even bigger check.

@Rob: The refunds did not come through an affiliate program, Snapnames only introduced their affiliate program recenly.

Rust Consulting is a class action settlement firm (check out their website). Oversee’s planning ahead.

5% interest is laughable. He made A LOT more than that monetizing and selling those domains.

But I guess they can’t tell us about any pending litigation against Nelson.. yet.

[...] extremely hard and has proceeded to rock the boat.  According to several valid resources including Elliot’s Blog, Tech Crunch and TheDomains.com a SnapNames employee violated the company’s policy and setup [...]

[...] extremely hard and has proceeded to rock the boat.  According to several valid resources including Elliot’s Blog, Tech Crunch and TheDomains.com a SnapNames employee violated the company’s policy and setup [...]

Rob,
The advantage the insider had was that he could see your proxy bid. Using your example, he bid $10. less than your proxy bid.

I was fortunate that I kept spreadsheets of my winning and losses back to 2003.

Halvarez did not show up on my radar til May, 2005.

dark days

[...] Originally Posted by Mitsu we received the snapname email regarding some employees fraud ? See: SnapNames Employee Caught Bidding on Auctions [...]

they should be sued badly anf kicked form the industry

http://www.doj.state.or.us/help/explain_consumer_complaint.shtml

Adam Dicker (a VP at Godaddy) bid at TDNAM auction(s) against clueless domainers, and procured at least SPYWARE.US in that fashion. Isn’t that the same thing Nelson did? Dicker keeps his job, and the domain. Godaddy changed their policy about employees bidding against clueless suckers, only after the farce was outed in domain forums. Adam Dicker didn’t get fired. In fact, I notice some of the comments here are by those who participate at dnforum.com, which Dicker owns.

Why does Dicker get a pass and Nelson doesn’t? My feeling is that if Dicker got caught for one episode, he probably did it numerous times.

[...] Snapnames Theory I have no way of knowing what really happened with the Snapnames employee bidding scandal, but I do have a theory, and unlike other theories I’ve read, this doesn’t involve any [...]

seems snapnames isnt the only shady operator at all huh?
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