ICANN has told RegisterFly that it is in violation of its operating agreement and has given them 15 days to repair serious operational problems. If not RegisterFly will lose its accreditation. RegisterFly customers have been complaining for months and the situation has now become critical.
Kevin Medina, the President and Chief Executive Officer of RegisterFly has been fired. Unified Names, the parent company of RegisterFly has filed suit against Kevin Medina. The suit charges that Medina was spending $10,000 per month in corporate funds for rent on a Miami Beach penthouse apartment, $9,000 for escort services and $6,000 for liposuction surgery.
RegisterFly states that more than 75,000 customer domains expired because of the company's financial and management problems.
RegisterFly has said that after Kevin Medina was terminated he deleted email accounts, access to support tools, and access to their risk/billing department to issue refunds.
ICANN says that RegisterFly employees in their Risk/Fraud Department worked on a pure commission basis and that caused overcharging and retaliation against customers who complained.
ICANN also states that owes them over $130,000 in back accreditation fees.
ICANN says Registerfly did not give its customers the codes needed to transfer their names to competing registrars and that Registerfly kept customer domain names locked so they couldn't be moved.
There are customer complaints that Registerfly double, triple or quadruple-billed for domain names and would deny customers access to their names if they tried to chargeback their credit cards.
ICANN has complaints that many RegisterFly customers paid for multi-year domain registrations but the registrations were only made for one year. Recently thousands of Registerfly customers paid to have domains registered which weren't registered because Registerfly didn't have a sufficient cash float with the domain registry.
Registerfly controls about two million names for about 900,000 different owners.
RegisterFly is also an SSL certificate authority. Approximately 460 site owners are currently securing sites with FlySSL certificates.
Here are some links to articles with additional details:
Burke Hansen, who is an attorney in San Francisco, California, recently had some very interesting comments and suggestions about this horrible RegisterFly situation as well as problems with ICANN. Here is what he said:
Quote:
The scorn heaped upon ICANN recently for its laissez faire attitude toward customer allegations of fraud by its accredited registrar Registerfly - a scandal in which ICANN spent the better part of a year repeatedly referring customers back to Registerfly, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of misconduct - has forced ICANN to acknowledge that it is a responsible for holding its accredited registrars to certain ethical standards. Well, it's a start.
For those, however, whose domains were lost through either neglect or malfeasance on the part of Registerfly, and whose domains are now occupied by cybersquatters, the loss of a business or personal website formerly hosted by Registerfly still burns.
Click here to find out more!
Although ICANN recently issued an ultimatum to Registerfly, threatening to pull its accreditation unless it resolved its myriad customer service issues within two weeks time, the fact remains that pulling the accreditation of a negligent or possibly even criminal registrar is a merely a prophylactic measure - it may prevent future harm, but does nothing to resolve the property rights of those whose internet based businesses have vanished into cyberspace.
The fact is, Registerfly is not alone, and ICANN needs to develop some kind procedural safeguards to ensure that disputed domains are not inadvertantly auctioned off to the first bidder before this happens again.
Although ICANN rightly claims that allegations of monetary damages due to fraud or negligence need to be addressed by local authorities, the integrity of the domain system itself needs to be protected by ICANN - that, after all, is why ICANN takes a cut of every domain registration fee.
Whether or not local or federal authorities choose to prosecute Registerfly - and the rumors flying indicate that both the FBI and the Secret Service are involved now - jilted customers cannot expect the FBI, for example, just to hand over the control of a domain name that might now be owned by bona fide purchaser on the other side of the world. It's not like stolen silverware or jewelry - the only way for the authorities to return control of the domain would be to get a court order against, um... that group, the one that controls domain registration...oh yeah, ICANN.
At the very minimum, ICANN needs to be proactive here and develop a system for holding disputed domains in trust until the rightful owner can be determined. Even better would be a formal dispute resolution system with investigative power to follow up on serious allegations and nip them in the bud. Mr. Zupke, ICANN's go between with the accredited registrars, cannot police cyberspace alone.
ICANN performs a function in cyberspace somewhat analogous to the hall of records in a local community, organizing and documenting property rights. If ICANN feels that enforcing certain ethical standards on its partners runs counter to its bureaucratic instincts, it could still subcontract out such enforcement to a third party security group, much as it subcontracts out domain registration to groups like Registerfly.
The Registerfly fiasco has laid clear for all to see the inadequacies of the current registrar accreditation system, and the need for reform. There's no time like the present. ®
Burke Hansen, attorney at large, heads a San Francisco law office
ICANN has been able to get the registries of .com, .net, .biz and .info namespaces, to lock all pending-expiration Registerfly domains into a "Server-Delete-Prohibited" status for one month.
According to ICANN this will stop them from being deleted from the registry and being made available for re-registration by others.
ICANN says RegisterFly has refused to give them data about customer accounts, so they are going to court on March 6, 2007 to force Registerfly to do it.
RegisterFly also has a statement to all customers. In the statement they say they are sorry for what has happened and they are taking steps to make things better in the future. Here is a link to the complete statement http://www.registerfly.com/official-announcement.html
There are many who believe that RegisterFly has a very rocky road ahead.
A judge has ruled in favor of Kevin Medina. This was a shock to most people, including the lawyers for Kevin Medina. He once again has control of RegisterFly. Medina was running Registerfly when it started having problems and many say he is the cause of the problems.
Several current and former RegisterFly customers are saying this is a very bad move that could lead to a quick end of RegisterFly.
The company is having very serious financial problems and it is possible that ICANN could shortly take away their accreditation.
Kevin Medina said he has not been stealing from RegisterFly or from any of the customers as others associated with the company have claimed.
lets be frank here Regfly was the home of .info spam and had serious security issues - only the die hard mfa guys would shed a tear if they went forever...
The basic details about this RegisterFly mess have been covered. But some details didn't get mentioned. This articles covers some of the details that weren't spoken about very often. This is starting to sound like something out of a movie:
Quote:
The landslide of bad news from Registerfly has continued, as ICANN created a forum for dispute resolution for this mess, and Registerfly customers desperately tried to shift their domains to other registrars before they vanished into cyberspace.
The romantic and professional break up between Kevin Medina and John Narusewicz, which had led to acriminonious and very public allegations of gross mismanagement of corporate funds that were frittered away on such vanities as male prostitutes and liposuction, and which resulted in a power struggle for control of the company, concluded with a thud.
Click here to find out more!
Narusewicz, Medina's former lover and Registerfly's corporate secretary, had sued Medina in federal court in New Jersey to remove Medina as CEO and force him to sell his stake in the company.
District Court Judge Peter Sheridan ruled that Medina could not be removed as CEO or forced to liquidate his holdings under New Jersey law, but, in something of a face-saving move - under a federal statute that allows judges to advise litigants to appeal if the judge feels the law in question to be unsettled - recommended that the plaintiff Narusewicz do so.
Not that it matters; the decision effectively closes the books on Registerfly. Although the judge expressed unease with the results of the decision, the appeals process is far too lengthy and unwieldy to save a company as near to dissolution as Registerfly.
The silver lining in this black cloud is that ICANN has finally acknowledged publicly that it is in fact responsible for ensuring that accredited registrars live up to their responsibilities in the Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAA). The Registerfly fiasco has generated such an overwhelming outcry that ICANN has pulled its head out of the sand, and - get this – is actually trying to help people out of this mess, albeit with pretty mixed results.
Initially, ICANN denied everything, even refusing to post negative comments about Registerfly in its blog. Denial, of course, is always the first stage; grudging acknowledgement follows. After extolling the virtues of the registry competition engendered by the accreditation process, Paul Levins, ICANN's new point man for this train wreck, admitted (ICANN Blog) last week that ICANN bears reponsibility for enforcing its accreditation standards.
Subsequent blog entries detail a plethora of technical glitches on the Registerfly side that prevent authcodes from being released, followed by some aggressive finger wagging by ICANN. The failure to release authcodes has been a major impediment to transferring domains to other registrars. The piddly statistics on domain transfers (ICANN Blog) provided by ICANN yesterday only reinforced a sense that ICANN's recent change of heart is oriented more toward future problems than toward Registerfly.
ICANN has terminated RegisterFly's accreditation. Here is the statement from ICANN
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ICANN today issued a formal notice of termination of RegisterFly.com's Registration Accreditation Agreement (RAA).
ICANN has issued a letter to RegisterFly [PDF, 902K] indicating that it will cease operating as an ICANN-Accredited Registrar on March 31, 2007. Under the terms of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), ICANN must provide 15 days written notice to RegisterFly of its intention to terminate.
Effective immediately ICANN has terminated RegisterFly's right to use the ICANN Accredited Registrar logo on its website.
Between now and 31 March RegisterFly is required to unlock and provide all necessary Authinfo codes to allow domain name transfers to occur. Any and all registrants wishing to transfer away from RegisterFly during this period should be allowed to do so efficiently and expeditiously.
"Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers," Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said today.
"ICANN has been frustrated and distressed by recent management confusion inside RegisterFly," Dr. Twomey, President said. "I completely understand the greater frustration and enormous difficulty that this has created for registrants."
When the Agreement is terminated, ICANN can approve a bulk transfer of all current RegisterFly domain names to another ICANN accredited Registrar.
"Of course, RegisterFly does not have to wait till then. They can request ICANN to approve a bulk transfer immediately. I call on RegisterFly to act in the interests of registrants and seek such a transfer from us straight away," Dr. Twomey said.
I must give you some credit, Larry. Thanks for keeping all of us up to date on what's happening with this whole mess.
Luckily, my affiliation with RegisterFly lasted less than a day and decided against registering a domain with them when I realized something was amiss. (Though, they still owe me $7 for the double charge when I initially put money into the account for one of their services...which I'm doubtful was ever provided.)
I sincerely hope that all of those people affected by this mess can recover their losses. It truly is a scary thought and should remind everyone just how important a registrar is...
I knew this was something that would be of interest to a lot of people so I wanted to provide as much information as possible about it. I hope this will have a happy ending for RegisterFly customers.
The RegisterFly is still up attempting to get new customers. It is going to be very interesting to see the final outcome of this entire big mess.
The RegisterFly mess - ICANN getting involved
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