A detailed look at the whois history of domains won by SnapNames VP of Engineering Nelson Brady shows that he pointed at least one domain to SnapNames DNS servers by mistake, and let a good domain expire.

Sometime in 2008 between June and September, whois records indicate that Brady transferred one of his ill-gotten domains, simsextremos.com, from registrar TuvaluDomains to his preferred registrar, eNom. According to DomainTools, when the domain turned up at eNom it was sporting the OregonNames.com DNS servers that SnapNames traditionally used to park deleting domains.

It is unclear how this mistake was made, but it is possible that Brady had set his default DNS servers incorrectly at eNom. While this mistake alone would not have alerted the SnapNames management to the scam, it is the type of mistake that domain investors on the message boards might have used to prove that halvarez possibly worked for SnapNames.

Brady’s second mistake was letting a five-digit domain expire, 90523.com. He acquired it in April of 2008 for $51, and failed to renew it the following year. What’s interesting about this deal was that it was not a pre-release auction, but one of the $9 post-drop auctions.

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Some gave me a hard time for not including more facts in my previous story that speculated on how the SnapNames scam was uncovered. I admit that my previous article was vague where clear facts would have sufficed. So let me set the record straight and dive into the minutia of whois histories that drove my initial conclusions.

After searching Google, I found the following domains that were identified as won by halvarez (Nelson Brady, ex-VP of Engineering at SnapNames) on a number of websites and forums including dnforum.com and domain.cn. I focused on domains that were said to have been won (instead of lost) by halvarez because they would have a whois history on DomainTools of the winner. Looking at the whois history would prove or disprove the sometimes outlandish claims made in the forums. Here are the  21 domains that were said to be won by halvarez:

hamvuiclub.com
cinemagazine.com
lifeclips.com
searchescorts.com
tvizle.com
googletrends.com
extrawallpapers.com
fashionindia.net
jeniferlopez.com
tinhlathe.com
only-maps.com
hannahmontanna.com
nanotorrent.com
mature-club.com
curlyhair.net
simsextremos.com
moslemlink.com
90523.com
itttech.com
alphadating.com
xxbox.com

All of them except for two had an important commonality: being registered at one point in time by DomainQueue of Tacoma, WA. It was this pattern that proved the Tacoma address was the primary address of halvarez. Of the two domains that I could not link definitively, one I suspect was registered by DomainQueue/halvarez (alphadating.com) because it was eventually registered to iREIT but lacks whois history for all of 2006 and 2007. The other appears to have no link whatsoever (xxbox.com).

Now that we have a list of 19 domains that were won by halvarez, we can look at the acquisition date (when he won the auction at SnapNames), if any were transferred to iREIT, and where they are today. This is the data I used to generate the graphic at the top of this article.

I believe that due diligence for iREIT acquisition of the DomainQueue portfolio began around September 20th, 2006. This is the first date that DomainQueue domains (tvizle.com) began to point their DNS to iREIT DNS servers. This is a common practice for domain owners looking to prove that their domains have traffic to a potential buyer.

Nine days later on September 29th 2006, iREIT issued a press release announcing that Craig Snyder had joined iREIT.

On November 30, 2006 the DomainQueue domains (cinemagazine.com) began changing whois ownership to iREIT.

Looking at all domains acquired by DomainQueue before November 30, 2006, it appears that iREIT bought almost the entire portfolio. Credit should be given to them for avoiding the more controversial adult domains and “celebrity typo name” domains and focusing on the traffic portion of the portfolio.

The reason I am pointing out all of these patterns is to show why I speculated that Craig Snyder was the person who discovered the scam after joining SnapNames. I am not accusing iREIT of any wrongdoing. In fact, they are one of the most risk-averse companies operating in the domain aftermarket and they would not have touched the DomainQueue deal with a 10 foot pole had they been aware of the troubled source of the domains.

After the Wall Street Journal broke the name and other details about the new E-Reader from Barnes & Noble, I did some digging on the ownership history of Nook.com. It appears that the domain ownership was transferred on June 3, 2009 and it is probably not coincidence that a trademark for “Nook” was filed on June 4, 2009 by Fission Inc.

Fission Inc, a Delaware Corporation, is possibly a shell company created by B&N for hiding intellectual property. Their Wilmington, DE address has over 200 corporations and people registered at that address and suite number.

Fission Inc changed their DNS servers on Nook.com to “barnesandnoble.com” two weeks ago on October 7 which may have tipped off someone. Before Fission owned it, intellectual property company Marksmen held ownership for a few days, perhaps because they were the company brokering the deal between Fission and the domain owner.

It is possible that Nook.com was not the most expensive purchase. B&N had to go through legendary domain investor Frank Schilling for Nook.net. Frank is known for getting top dollar when selling domains.

B&N also acquired Nook.org, but no public sales data for any of the three domains is available.

I live domains. Like a lot of people in this industry I eat, sleep, and breathe domains. I bought my first one in 1996, and was absolutely addicted by the time the price-cut happened. That was how I came to own around 700 domains by 1999, before I even heard about GoTo.com.

But what have I done lately? Well, not very much to tell you the truth. I would say that 1998 was probably the high point of my domain buying career and I am running fast to catch up with everyone else out there.

However, I think what makes me, and perhaps this blog, relevant today is my job with a company that specializes in SEO. I am a domain guy at heart, but my day job is to support and help make SEO decisions. As often as possible I will try to relay the many lessons learned for the benefit of whoever cares to read. And perhaps I may inspire another domain guy to venture down the lucrative SEO road.