Joseph Shemaria in the news

September 18, 2007

Fraud - Nevada Man Agrees to Plead Guilty In Phony Domain Name Infringement Scam

LOS ANGELES--A Las Vegas resident agreed Sept. 6 to plead guilty to wire fraud for impersonating a Los Angeles-based intellectual property lawyer and threatening owners of Internet domain names with trademark infringement lawsuits in order to obtain the sites for himself, the United States Attorney in Los Angeles announced (United States v. Scali, C.D. Cal., No. CR 07-00908, plea agreement
filed 9/6/07).

2006, David D. Scali, using an alias that the plea agreement lists only as "E.R.,"
registered the e-mail address "trademarkinfringement@netzero.net," and within days began using that address to send e-mails to registered owners of URLs or domain names.

In the e-mails, Scali claimed to be a Los Angeles attorney, identified in the plea agreement only by the initials "K.Y.C.," and threatened the domain name owners with trademark infringement lawsuits seeking $100,000 if they did not relinquish ownership within two days.

Scali admitted in his plea agreement that he intended to obtain the domain name registrations for his own personal gain, the U.S. Attorney noted in the statement.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Wesley L. Hsu, of the Cyber and Intellectual Property Crimes Section, who is prosecuting the case, told BNA he could not discuss the details of the case beyond the plea agreement, though he did note that Scali himself was not a lawyer.

He declined to comment on the number of domain names targeted by the scheme, but the plea agreement said that "at least one owner did in fact part with a URL that she rightfully owned" as a result of the scheme.

Impersonating an Attorney

The wire fraud count concerned a victim who surrendered a domain name "very similar to www.citysearch.com," the U.S. Attorney stated in his announcement.

Citysearch.com hosts an online directory of Los Angeles hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, events, and other information about the city.

In fact, Scali targeted domain names that were slight misspellings of popular URLs, his attorney, Los Angeles-based Joseph Shemaria told BNA. In all, he wrote letters to about ten owners of misspelled domain names.

However, Scali never obtained any of the sites he targeted, Shemaria added.

The scheme apparently evolved from "a hobby" that Scali, a student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, developed by which he would buy URLs with slight misspellings of more familiar sites, and "park" them with Internet entities that would pay him a small amount every time there was a "hit" on one of the sites, because advertising would then appear on them, Shemaria noted.

However, he found it difficult to obtain enough of these domain names, and moved on to the scheme using threatening letters from a purported lawyer, he added.

Defendant 'A Real Nice Man.'

Shemaria described Scali as "a real nice man," who for a few days in the summer of 2006 made bad decisions.

He was caught when one of the victims phoned the lawyer Scali was impersonating; she, in turn, phoned authorities, Shemaria said.

Hsu said Scali is due to appear for arraignment in October.

The wire fraud charge carries a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in federal prison. However, the plea agreement contemplates a sentence ranging from probation to six months in custody, though the sentencing judge will make the final decision on Scali's sentence, the U.S. Attorney noted.

By Tom Gilroy

For more information on federal criminal defense law, contact the Law Offices of Joseph Shemaria of Los Angeles, California.