Cybersquatter Faces Jail Time For Wire Fraud

coondoggie writes to mention that a Las Vegas man faces about 20 years in prison today after pleading guilty in a case where he impersonated intellectual property lawyers and tried to bully owners out of their domain names. "According to the FBI, David Scali is charged with registering an e-mail account under an alias and then sending e-mails in which he claimed to be the intellectual property lawyer. In the e-mails, which were sent in late June and early July of 2006, Scali threatened to file $100,000 trademark infringement lawsuits against the owners of various Internet website names unless they gave up their domain name registrations within two days."

Thats step 1

[AuMatar]

Now when is the FBI going to come down on the real lawyers who do the exact same thing?

And step 2 is...

[Kelson]

Now when is the FBI going to come down on the real lawyers who do the exact same thing?

And do what, indict them for impersonating themselves?

Re:And step 2 is...

[kmac06]

That'd be awesome if being a lawyer were an indictable offense.

Choose your target

[Hatta]

If you're going to rip someone off, don't rip off a lawyer. And if you're going to rip someone off on the internet, especially don't rip off a technology lawyer. Jeeze.

Re:Choose your target

[QMalcolm]

I don't know how successful the scam was, but an attitude could be really beneficial to a guy like him.

"Gee, lawyers are bloodsucking villains who will stop at nothing to win, I better just hand over the domain instead of fighting them in court. They're a LAWyer, after all, they must know the law!"

Reminds me of how a scientist seems much more trustworthy to the public if they're wearing a lab coat.

Re:

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

If I received a legal threat, I'd make sure it is from an ACTUAL lawyer before deciding what to do.

The law makes it so it is not too hard to verify that, a legitimate law firm needs to register with the bar, have a working contact number, etc (also they'd want to it order to get/do business).

Making sure the law firm exists and the threat was actually sent by them would be my first steps. Calling the police/FBI is step 2 if it was fake.

I knew something was fishy in his takedown request

[bobdotorg]

Maybe he shouldn't have signed it Lionel Hutch, Esq.

Re:I knew something was fishy in his takedown requ

[DavidJSimpson]

Maybe he shouldn't have signed it Lionel Hutch, Esq.

You mean Lionel Hutz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Hutz [wikipedia.org]
If you are going to impersonate someone, at least impersonate the right person.

Darwin Awards - Legal Edition

[evil_aar0n]

Would this be the equivalent of "winning" the Darwin Awards in the legal field?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not unless they started implementing some very inhumane punishments.

There can be only one

[cheebie]

"The" intellectual property lawyer?

It's been just one person causing all this pain?

Re:

[fbjon]

No, they're just interchangeable parts.

Re:

[Trogre]

Yes. He must be found and stopped.

20 years or only probation? Article says both.

[Anonymous Coward]

The article's heading says the same thing the first sentence says:

A Las Vegas man faces about 20 years in prison today after he agreed to plead guilty...

The last sentence of the article says:

The plea agreement contemplates a sentence ranging from probation to six months in custody, but the sentencing judge will make the final decision as to what Scali's sentence will be.

20 years? Probation? 6 months? Oh, well, they're all close.

Re:20 years or only probation? Article says both.

[AuMatar]

The maximum sentence is 20 years. Prosecutors agreed to ask for something in the probation-6 months range in exchange for a guilty plea. The judge makes the final decision and he is allowed to give up to the maximum, although they usually follow the plea agreement.

Not necessarily jail time

[arth1]

From the bottom of TFA:

"The plea agreement contemplates a sentence ranging from probation to six months in custody, but the sentencing judge will make the final decision as to what Scali's sentence will be."

In other words, the title of this article is very misleading.

Re:

[morgan_greywolf]

No, it isn't. If there was an article in which an armed robber was caught, he would be "facing" at least 5-10 years, maybe more if he killed someobdy. Whether the armed robber gets that sentence or not is up to the jury, or in some states, the sentencing judge. Do you read newspapers, Google News, or at least watch CNN?

Re:

[Oztechreich]

There's always hope.

John Zuccarini [wikipedia.org] ended up serving more than a year in prison for cybersquatting, and this seems more serious to me.

Probation more likely than 20yrs jail time

[fv]

The article title says he "faces 20 years in prison" to be sensational, and maybe that is the theoretical maximum. But the last line of the article says that "the plea agreement contemplates a sentence ranging from probation to six months in custody". The judge gets the final decision, but he is much more likely to get probation than a 20yr sentence.

Fyodor [insecure.org]

Re:

[FuzzyDaddy]

Maybe it will convince someone else to rehabilitate.

Just clumsy

[Anonymous Coward]

If he'd actually talked to a lawyer before writing these extortionary emails, he could have come up with a more successful wording. We've seen lots of cases where people manage to imply things without actually saying them outright. His plan could have worked.

Re:

[DustyShadow]

Yea but no one goes into a lawyer's office asking "hey can you help steal a bunch of shit?" ...oh wait

Ignore legal threats

[QuantumG]

Which is exactly why you should ignore legal threats.

"I'll see you in court then" is the only sensible response.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ignore legal threats

[QuantumG]

You offer to settle once you have those numbers, not before.

Re:

[QuantumG]

Blah. People threaten to sue you all the time in business. You just gotta roll with it. When it starts costing you money, they you worry about it.

Re:

[Trogre]

Couldn't contact dough:8010
The web interface is down for maintenance.

I don't get it. Linus isn't usually known for this level of subtlety.

Re:

[pclminion]

He's not being charged with two things, he's being charged with one thing. That "and" in there doesn't imply there are two separate aspects to his behavior. The two taken in conjunction constitute a SINGLE offense.

It's about time

[Oztechreich]

We've had several similar threats from cybersquatters in the past. As well as the usual imposters trying to get us to transfer domain registrations.

This sort of thing deserves closer policing. It is a drain on the time of registrars and registrants alike to have to deal with these sorts of charlatans.

I say throw the book at him

[adona1]

Impersonating a lawyer is bad enough, but going so far as to impersonate an intellectual property lawyer? The man clearly has no shame. Society must be protected from people as depraved as him.

Re:

[AnalogDiehard]

Impersonating a lawyer is bad enough, but going so far as to impersonate an intellectual property lawyer? The man clearly has no shame. Society must be protected from people as depraved as him.

Huh? Lawyers lie all the time. I wouldn't had known the difference.

Re:

[MLease]

Is it worse to impersonate an intellectual property lawyer, or to be one?

-Mike

To what end?

[nurb432]

What was he going to do with the domains once he took possession? Sell them back to the people he defrauded?

Straight from Gogol's drama

[piotru]

In a little town of imperial Russia, where the corrupt bureaucracy rules supreme, one stranger is mistaken for the General Inspector sent incognito from a Very Important Office.

Nikolai Gogol's "Revizor" (The Inspector General)

Find the analogies, you mere humans.
Both were impostors of the scary overlords.
That this could work tells volumes about the country.

But?

[Lost Penguin]

I thought SCOX was in utah....

Yes, actually. The cat does "got my tongue."

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Judge: I hereby sentence you to 20 years in a minimum security prison, to include but not be limited to daily "personal infringements" via "bullying".