A 26-year-old New Jersey man has plead guilty to stealing and illegally selling an Internet domain in a first-of-its-kind case.
Daniel Goncalves of Union Township entered a guilty plea earlier today in New Jersey state Superior Court for stealing the "P2P.com" domain from Mark Ostrofsky, Albert Angel and Lesli Angel. Prosecutors will recommend that he serves a five-year prison term and pay restitution for his crimes.
Some background: In 2005, well-known domain name investor Marc Ostrofsky, attorney Albert Angel and wife Lesli Angel acquired the P2P.com domain for $160,000 from Wisconsin-based Port to Print Inc. According to Domain Name News, Goncalves allegedly hacked into Angel's e-mail account and used information from it to retrieve the login details for P2P.com and transferred the domain to his Godaddy account.
After transferring the domain to his name and attempting to cover his tracks by faking a PayPal transaction between himself and Albert Angel, Goncalves sold the domain to NBA basketball player Mark Madsen, who didn't know the domain was stolen, for more than $100,000 on eBay. The Angels quickly took their case to New Jersey and Florida (their state of residence). Eventually the investigation led to Goncalves's arrest by the New Jersey State Police Cyber-Crime Unit in 2009.
Goncalves is the first person known to be arrested for domain name theft in the U.S. Because of its unique status, it could serve as a precedent for other domain theft cases.
Image courtesy of Flickr, akatec