A domainer -- that is, a person who does business buying and selling domain names -- can guess what the title above is referring to.

In case you aren't one, there's a new corporate scandal afoot. It's been going on for at least 4 years, too. Snapnames, the domain auction company, has just sent out emails to its customers to let them know they've just caught and fired an employee who was screwing with the auctions. This person drove up bids far higher than they might have been, he won lots of domains he obviously wasn't entitled to get as part of the company, and even siphoned off part of the money paid for the domains he won and put that money somewhere else.

Snapnames is saying he was involved in about 5% of the auctions. They're offering a rebate to customers depending on how much they were affected by the rogue employee.

The main domainers' forums have concluded that this employee was using the name halvarez, and is actually Nelson Brady, one of the vice presidents of Snapnames. This much appears to be correct. Domainers forums have been speculating on this user account for at least 3 years. They call him "the Devil," and some even said they thought it was Snapnames itself. Some thought it was another domain-buying service.

The thing is, Snapnames has admitted there was wrongdoing, but now they've deleted most of everyone's auction histories, so no one can see how much they were affected by this guy. We are supposed to take their word for it when they offer us a settlement. They've removed the evidence.

I have objections. Not only is it the cost of domains I bought that was inflated, not only is it domains I didn't win because halvarez took them, but the very expensive work hours of the employee who bid in so many auctions has to be considered. So many hours that may have been wasted because of halvarez.

Also -- just as in the AbsolutePoker online poker room scandal (see "Russ Hamilton" for this; he used an admin account to read other players' cards and steal around $6 million) -- it takes multiple user accounts to really get away with a scam like this successfully for years. It's more than the "halvarez" account we should be looking for. There are lists of other suspected accounts you can find in the domains forums, and one called "bonkers" is high on that list.

This person -- if it truly is Nelson Brady -- had reasons other than acquiring domains. His pay and/or bonuses must have been directly connected to sales, and he did his utmost to drive them up. That's the bonus culture for you.

Another wonderful effect of this is the loss of faith in the auction industry. All the other domain auction companies are jumping to let customers know they've got security in place to prevent anything like this... but the horse is already running. People are wondering if they can trust any auction anymore. For domainers, it's as if eBay just announced it has been cheating all along.

You never know who's on the internets.