Domain Name Appraisal Scams
Here’s a new one on me. The Domain Name Appraisal Scam. The email is simple, some emails you asking to buy your domain name for 65% of it’s appraised value. They include links to three different “appraisal services,” one of which is a scam site. The scam site is of course the cheapest of them all.
What is not quite clear in this scam is if they’re also stealing credit card info, or just trying to get people to pay for a bogus appraisal.
From: jeffmiller44@gmail.com
Dear Sir or Madam,
We are interested to buy your domain name BBXGAME.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 companies:
sedo.com
flyappraisals.com
accuratedomains.com
If you already 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,
Jeff Miller
In this case the fake Domain Name Appraisal company is flyappraisals.com. Others have reported the fake appraisal company being nameorange.com and namepros.com
On a side note and out of curiosity I did a Google Search for Free Domain Name Appraisals and came up with these:
Swiftappraisal.com
LeapFish.com
DNScoop.com
BBXGame.com appraises for $1600-$2400, $25, and $506 in that order. Which goes to show that the art of Domain Name Appraisals is black at best.