Fraudsters continue to speculate on pandemics, panic, and scarcity (iptwins.com, 2020-03-19), while brand owners (googlecoronavirus.com, iptwins.com, 2020-04-06) and authorities continue their efforts in the fight against fraud of all kinds (iptwins.com, 2020-03-30).
On April 24, 2020, the United States government obtained the seizure of the domain name coronaprevention.org:
“The seizure warrant alleges that the owner of the domain name, coronaprevention.org, posted it for sale on a hackers forum. The post appeared the day after the President declared a national emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The seller stated on the forum that this domain would be an effective way to sell “high markup in demand products.” The seller exponentially marked up the price of the domain. The seller asked for the payment to be made via bitcoin.
The warrant further alleges that the seller engaged in conversations with an undercover agent from Homeland Security Investigations about the sale of the domain. The seller stated that it was “genius” to sell “fake testing kits” using this domain. The seller further stated that the seller “wanted to do that but I couldn’t get enough cash to bulk buy them from Alibaba [a Chinese e-commerce site].” The seller directed the undercover agent on how to set up a new website on the domain using a foreign-based service, so as to prevent U.S. authorities from being able to shut it down in the future.”
Source: Justice.gov, 2020.04.24.
