Tesla is now the proud owner of 52 Tesla-themed phishing domains created by a Russian crypto scammer after it successfully appealed to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
As reported by Domain Name Wire, WIPO panelist WiIliam A. Van Caenegem transferred ownership of the domains from the Russian national Ekaterina Tkachenko to Elon Musk’s electric car firm on May 27.
The domain names were similar to Tesla’s but included keywords such as “bitcoin,” “coin,” “bonus,” “Trump,” and “Musk,” to name a few.
The various Tesla-themed domains used for crypto scams.
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The landing pages featured a picture of Elon Musk and promised to double investors’ money if they sent a small amount of crypto to a specified address.
Caenegem concluded that Tkachenko had acted “in bad faith” by using trademarked names and ordered the domain transfer.
By the time the complaint was filed, antivirus software had mostly blocked access to all the sites.
The US recently sanctioned a Philippines-based tech firm that allegedly bought thousands of domain names in bulk and sold them on to crypto scammers behind over $200 million in US victim losses.
Like Tkachenko’s, these domain names were intentionally similar and allowed cyber criminals to quickly swap to other domain names after legitimate providers took the others down.
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