My Blog can be found at Entrepreneur.pro. Feel free to discuss there with me or just email me direct. A Sedo - .mobi MTLD Conspiracy? - How they juiced the money out of us.. or will they?
Hello everyone. As you may well have heard I was one of the original winners of the .mobi domains held at SEDO. I won Music.mobi and was confirmed the winner via 2 emails and invoiced, later to find out that SEDO and the MTLD orchestrated an illegal move to maximize their revenues and advertise a second auction. They claimed this was because their servers were slow in the last few minutes of the 7-day auction claiming that they could do this according to their Terms of Service / Conditions. They can claim anything but it does not mean the TOS is legal.
Additionally, they advertised the 5-minute slow-down of their servers and invited new bidders to join. Using hype language, both the MTLD and Sedo sent 2 emails to all of their subscribed members and contact lists as well as blogged about it and added posts all over the internet. Furthermore, instead of 5-minutes being added and only allowing the original bidders to give their final price, they added 2.5 hours to the auction.
Obviously we could all write a book about this fraudulent behavior which undermines Sedo's credibility as well as the intention of the .mobi MTLD. Note that the winner of the top domains including music.mobi, sports.mobi, photos.mobi, movies.mobi, games.mobi was one individual person. The RFP process and equal distribution claims of premium domains by the MTLD are thus once a big, huge lie. This was only meant to fill up the pockets of the MTLD and Sedo.
I am preparing a class lawsuit against Sedo USA and the MTLD seeking the transfer of domains to the original winning bidders. Sending 2 emails confirming you are a winner and creating an invoice requesting a wire transfer constitutes a binding agreement. Their TOS is hence nullified and can be comprehended as illegal.
Sincerely,
Costa G Roussos
Email: SedoMtldLawsuit@music.us (Lawyer Contact: Paul Farkas Esq., New York)
Invoice of the winning Music.mobi claiming myself as the winner of the auction
Email Confirming Me As the Winner of Music.mobi
----- Original Message -----
From: <auctions@sedo.com>
To: <Costa>
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 9:16 AM
Subject: You're the winner of music.mobi
>
> Hello Constantinos,
>
> Congratulations! The auction for music.mobi has closed and you are the highest bidder.
>
> You can review the auction history here: http://www.sedo.com/auction/index.php?language=us&auction_id=20751
>
> The next step:
>
> Please log into your account to review the purchase and sales agreement and access your invoice.
> Instructions on submitting payment are available on the invoice.
> As soon as payment is confirmed your personal transfer agent will work with you and the seller to smoothly transfer the domain to your registrar.
> Should you have questions please contact us at info@sedo.com
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Your Sedo Team
>
> ________________________________________________
>
> Sedo.com :: 161 First Street :: Cambridge, MA 02142
> tel 617-499-7200 :: fax 617-499-7203
> http://www.sedo.com :: info@sedo.com
Second Email Confirming Me as the Winner of Music.mobi and Requesting Payment
----- Original Message -----
From: <steve.opadeji@sedo.com>
To: <Costa>
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 9:16 AM
Subject: music.mobi
> Dear Mr. Roussos,
>
> Congratulations on your purchase. Before you can begin the process to assume ownership of this domain you need to place your payment for this domain in escrow on our escrow account.
>
> For your records we have created an invoice for this transaction that you can access in your account under the "Billing" section. Please feel free to print or use this invoice as necessary.
>
> There are two possible methods via which you can send us your payment:
>
> 1) Via Paypal
>
> You can use the PayPal address on the invoice in order to pay for the domain. You will also need to add on 3% to the agreed price when paying via PayPal (only applicable to purchases over $500). Please do not forget to include the Order Number which you will find on your invoice. It is essential that you include this number to ensure the payment is processed correctly. Failure to include this number will lead to delays. Please note that PayPal payments are not processed automatically, so there can be a delay of up to 24 hours (72 at weekends) for your payment to be processed by our accounts department.
>
> 2) Via Wire Transfer
>
> Our bank details are included on the invoice, for you to make payment. Once again, please do not forget to include the Order Number which you will find on your invoice. It is essential that you include this number to ensure the payment is processed correctly. Failure to include this number will lead to delays.
>
> Shortly after we confirm receipt of payment we will inform the seller and send an email instructing you as to what steps are needed to process the ownership change. It is often the case that certain preparatory steps need to be taken with the seller prior to providing you with further instructions, so we ask for your patience in this matter.
>
> Should you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact us at the email address listed below.
>
> This is an automatically generated notification. Please do not reply to this email.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steve Opadeji
> --
> Sedo.com :: Transfer Team
> tel: +1-617-499-7200 :: fax: +1-617-499-7203
> email: steve.opadeji@sedo.com
Screenshot of my winning bid for Music.mobi
Last Update:
Hello everyone!
Busy day meeting up with lawyers about this whole Sedo mess.
First thing in the morning I called Sedo up in the East Coast and I explained the situation to the person in charge of escrow/transfers and asked to talk with Schumacher the company CEO. He said he can not do that directly and that I could speak to the supervisor. Well guess what? The supervisor NEVER answered the phone. I left a voicemail underlying all my points and that I will be investing $600k in legal fees and advertising in not only getting Music.mobi back via multiple lawsuits, I would go for punitive damages and also bring justice to all the bidders who who won their original auctions to wake up the next day to find out they actually lost.
I was OUTRAGED to find out that a SEDO representative sent me an email. Here it is, public for everyone to see:
----- Original Message -----
From: Jay Finnan <jay@sedo.com>
To: Costa
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 1:37 PM
Subject: mp3s.mobi
Hello,
I was speaking to the owner of mp3s.mobi. The auction that closed today has them interested in selling their domain now. If you are interested in acquiring the name the owners would sell it today for $500,000 USD.
If you’re interested please let me know.
Best regards,
Jay Finnan
Brokerage Team Leader
Portfolio Sales Manager
--
Sedo.com, LLC
tel +1 (617) 499-7237 • fax +1 (617) 499-7203
http://www.sedo.com • mailto:jay@sedo.com
My response was one of outrage and disgust since my proxy of $611k was output by some random bidder who was never even involved in the original auction. The intent was clear. SEDO wanted MANIPULATE the situation and my $611k proxy bid to make more money on my situation. I told them I would not buy the domain for even $300 and that they make me sick asking me to buy a CRAPPY domain for $500k which leads me to believe that they had insider information and that they manipulated the system to INCREASE the value of the .mobi auctions.
OK here is the conspiracy and actions that lead me to believe that this was a bigger scam than the .eu - As one would say they EnronSedoed or EnronMTLDed me.
1) They hold the auction and anticipate high demand. They decide not to increase their server size so that the loading times are slow. They even adjust their server settings at the 5 minute mark for lower processing times. They KNOW that there will be a lot of traffic in the last 10 minutes so they stipulate users would construe the traffic and server slowdown as "natural"
2) The time runs out. The winners are declared but they look at their TOS and decide they can abuse the original SEDO bidders so they can extract further monies. I know they would not redo the auction is my DSL connection was slow. They claim that the servers crashed (in actuality the servers did not crash - they just has the SLOWEST loading times. There is a difference between a computer crashing and a server being slow. The server was the SLOWEST. By the way, I videotaped the last 15 minutes of the auction which in essence proves that the servers did not crash, but they experienced slow loading times.
3) They move into strategy 2. They decide to create a hyped up environment to show to the world that the .mobi auction is going nuts and that the bidding is astronomical. There is SOO much demand that the servers crashed. Emails are sent by BOTH Sedo and the MTLD (Yes both - they leveraged their email lists to the maximum). New bidders read about it and get excited about the .mobi domain due to the artificial hype. Yes, this is where the music.mobi Bidder 13 and 14 who had no bids in the original Music.mobi auction come and start jacking up the prices, moving towards my $611k proxy. At this moment I am seeing my final win from $66k go to $616k. Other bidders experience the same thing. Others are sleeping or out celebrating the fact that the won. Later they will find out what has happened.
4) Sedo decides to add 2 hours to the bid so they can maximize the exposure of their email sending as well as invite new users. MTLD even starts posting on domain forums to alert everyone of the hype. I have this directly from one of the heads of .mobi MTLD Caroline Greer:
Dear Costa,
Thank you for your email and we are sorry for your disappointment.
Sedo extended the auction by three hours in accordance with its auction terms and conditions. Every effort was made to contact bidders in the auction and additional outreach efforts were made via blogs, web site posts etc.
Please contact Kate Donaghue from Sedo (copied on this email) if you need further clarity on Sedo's auction terms and conditions.
As regards the winning bidders, I have yet to see the list and we are unable to comment on bidder identities without the bidder’s explicit consent. However, I can assure you that dotMobi’s terms and conditions regarding site development apply in all cases.
Kind regards,
Caroline Greer
Director, Policy and Industry Relations
dotMobi
11 Exchange Place
IFSC, Dublin 1, Ireland
+ 353 87 1234244
Yes people, the MTLD did POST-AUCTION advertising. Yes, the head clearly stated in an email: "additional outreach efforts were made via blogs, web site posts" - WOW what a way to create some additional buzz and entice new bidders and jack up the price of .mobi
5) I did not receive a call back from the CEO Schumacher. However I did receive a call from the SEDO lawyer called Sharon. They obviously know what they did was fraud and would undermine their credibility. I can not believe that all the CAroline Greer's of MTLD and execs at Sedo are feeling good about themselves. This was a well thought out scheme. Even if the servers became slow due to excessive bandwidth (note the servers did not crash - their terminology was incorrect - a server expert told me that crashing and slowing down are 2 different things and would show 2 different results on your screen), it gives SEDO and MTLD no right to do all the things that transpired. And WHY did they add 3 hours? (Wait I thought it was 2 hours and then 30minutes extra - Caroline get your facts straight - SEDO did not follow your instructions very well about that additional 30 minutes huh?).
6) I have spoken to 10 attorneys today. yes very busy day. They are salivating over this case. And I mean salivating. Hey, they even said, if Sedo's attorney called you it means they have done something wrong and dont want anyone opening their mouth and saying something that will haunt them. I feel sorry for the one guy who thinks he won the top names. Dude, I assure you that in the class lawsuit I am filing (http://mobi.music.us), the MTLD's premium auction conditions will be included: equal distribution and RFPs. By definition you can not have all those domains. It is against MTLD policies. Wait EnronMTLD I mean.
By the way, I am pissed especially since I had a whole strategy on pushing the .mobi domain through a killer site which launches next year (3 years of development). Caroline Greer and the MTLD REJECTED my RFP claim since 2006 (yes I have been enquiring for that domain since 2006). By they way I do not own ANY .mobi domains. If I own one, I SHALL develop it. That is the goal. UNlike the fake high bidder who is too busy showing off his world record. I have one thing to say buddy. It is fake. My proxy of $611k must be retracted to reflect the REAL price of the domain. $66k. I will NOT assist some random domain-seller a-la-domain-king into showing off that he spent $616k. It is void buddy. I asked Sedo to retract the proxy bid of $611k. So dont send a wire transfer of $616k. Tell them I said I retracted my offer and that you should not be paying that. Even if you pay, they are still liable for damages. I hope they return your money when I get the domain back. Because i will. And so will all of you. Justice will be served.
