After the postponement of the Red Flags Rule until November 1, 2009, the industry continues to talk about the future of online identity and id verification. And there is good news: According to a Domainnamenews breaking article, an arrest was made for the very first time in a case of domain name theft.
Daniel Goncalves, a 25-year-old computer technician, was arrested Thursday on charges of stealing and selling the domain P2P.com. According to the news report, Goncalves was able to steal the domain from partners Albert Angel, his wife Lesli Angel and domain name investor Marc Ostrofsky by hacking into the Angels’ AOL email account. Goncalves then used the information contained in the email to retrieve login details for P2P.com via Godaddy.com, the host of the domain name.
Goncalves was also able to create false PayPal records to cover his trail. The records made it appear as if he had legally purchased P2P.com from the Angels for $1,500—much less than the $160,000 the partners paid when they acquired the domain from Port to Print, Inc. in 2005.
While Goncalves has been brought to justice, there are thousands more cases of hacking and information theft leading to identity fraud every year. The FTC’s Red Flags Rule will help to stop many of those cases before they happen by enforcing requirements for all creditors and financial institutions to implement identity fraud detection and response programs. Read more about Red Flag compliance at Electronic Verification Systems .