Appraisal Scam Now at NameOrange.com — Domain Name

Warning: do not buy domain appraisals at NameOrange.com.

A fresh domain appraisal scam that surfaced a few months ago has migrated to a fresh web site, NameOrange.com.

The scammers send an e-mail to domain name owners offering to buy their domain for a certain percentage of the appraisal price. The e-mail requires an appraisal from one of three domain name appraisal services, counting one owned by the scammer. The scammer’s appraisal service has the lowest price, so many people are duped into buying an appraisal from the service. Still, the scammer does not end up purchasing the domain names.

The scam originally sent people to Pozde.com, and later changed to TropicalNames.com.

Here is the full text of an email I received this morning:

subject: Offer to buy your domain name: DOMAIN.COM – domain name resellers

Dear Sir or Madam,

We are interested to buy your domain name DOMAIN.COM and offer to buy it from you for 65% of the appraised market value.

As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal firms:

se do.com
nameorange.com
accuratedomains.com

If you by now have an appraisal please forward it to us.

As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.

We appreciate your business,

Yours truly,

Charles Johnson