There is a new email scam floating around trying to trick domain owners into purchasing domain appraisals through a service called flyrating.com. The sender claims to be interested in a domain that you own and says he will pay 80% of its appraised value then casually drops the name of the scam company (flyrating.com) and a well known legitimate domain company (sedo.com). In their mind they have a 50% chance of getting a domain owner to purchase their domain appraisal.
The fraudulent emails are circulated by fabricated aliases using primarily Gmail accounts and IPs tracing back to Malaysia. The emails seem to be coming in batches grouped alphabetically, probably working from a list or auto generator.
This is a copy of the message that was sent to me:
We are interested to buy your domain name BLADESHARE.COM and offer to buy it from you for 80% of the appraised market value.
As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:
- flyrating.com
- sedo.comIf you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.
As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.
We appreciate your business,
Yours truly,
David Williams
A response from a Sedo employee:
Dear Nicholas,
In the last few days, many domain owners have been contacted by a third party who has expressed an interest in purchasing domains. The email is virtually identical each time and requests that the domain owner has a domain appraised by one of a few companies (including Sedo) before an offer is made. We believe the email is an attempt to get people to order an appraisal from flyrating.com. After purchasing an appraisal, the domain holder will not receive a response from the person again.
Sedo has no affiliation with the organization that made this offer, and we do not endorse them. We encourage domain owners to instruct interested parties to place bids through an online market place such as Sedo.com. Genuinely motivated buyers will be willing to negotiate through a secure platform.
An appraisal is a valuable tool for domain owners to take advantage of when they are looking to sell, but we do not wish to have someone misled into ordering one. If you would like, I can cancel your order and refund your payment.
Best regards,
(employee)
She went on to say:
We figured you got that email because its being used in a wide-spread scam. Today alone we got nearly 50 appraisal orders started by this scam. Sedo has taken many steps to protect customers from fraudulent e-mails including phone calls, e-mails, and drafting an article on the scam.
In this instance, domains beginning with the letter “b” or containing keywords like biz, blog, or blade suggested that someone had likely been victimized.
We hope you will consider using Sedo in the future!
Flyrating.com may or may not be a legitimate domain appraisal company but tricking domain owners into using your service is an outright scam. Shame on you flyrating.com!
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I got the same email from David Williams
We are interested to buy your domain name BEFOREYOUTAKE.COM and offer to buy it from you for 80% of the appraised market value.
As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:
- flyrating.com
- sedo.com
If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.
As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.
We appreciate your business,
Yours truly,
David Williams
It’s part of a long-running scam, possibly linked to a German citizen now living in Canada. More info here: http://www.dynamoo.com/blog/2009/06/flyappraisalscom-scam.html
.. happened to me too.
I actually fell for this myself! Thanks Nicholas.