Reglikedomain industry desk

Plays whac-a-mole with fraudsters’ domains — KeyState Holdings

Plays whac-a-mole with fraudsters’ domains — KeyState Holdings

Following taking down one fraudulent site, financial firm goes following another.

Picture of a whac-a-mole carnival game with two hammers and multiple holes

Financial services firm KeyState Holdings, LLC has filed a second lawsuit to take down a domain name that fraudsters are using to dupe people into sending money.

In July, the firm filed a lawsuit and requested a temporary restraining order (TRO) against KeyStateHoldings(.)com following a KeyState client told it that it lost $231,000 through a fraud perpetrated on the site. The judge granted the TRO.

Now, KeyState has filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against the domain KeyState(.)holdings, which the firm states is perpetrating a similar fraud. Similar to the first case, the fraudster copied the “real” KeyState’s physical address and Nevada IDs and included them on the fake website.

KeyState states a defrauded consumer contacted it on September 1, saying he had lost $1,000 through the fake site. Someone contacted this consumer via Telegram to get him to invest money and apparently pretended to be both KeyState and cryptocurrency firm Coinbase.

The real KeyState Holdings uses the domain Key-State.com.

Also on the wire

Other reporting from the domain desk.

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