Title: I run AutoTempest.com, a car listings search engine.  A few weeks ago, someone registered autoStempest.com, with an extra &#x27;s&#x27;.  They copied our logo and branding, as well as faking other information, such as their team and location.  (For example, their &quot;CEO&quot; is actually the CEO of Edmunds.)  They&#x27;ve taken other steps to appear legitimate, such as creating a fake Yelp profile and reviews.<p>From what we&#x27;ve heard from our users, they&#x27;re creating fake craigslist listings, and when people contact them, they&#x27;re directing them to links on their site, claiming to be &quot;Auto Tempest&quot;.  Then they solicit payments (presumably reservations or down payments, if not complete sight-unseen purchases), while using our name recognition to gain trust.<p>We&#x27;ve determined that their registrar is Namecheap (as is ours, coincidentally), and they are hosted by a company called Quasinetworks, NL.  Interestingly, if you google that company, the first result is someone complaining about how they were unresponsive to abuse notifications; not a great sign.  We did sent a message to their abuse contact, but haven&#x27;t heard back.  We also contacted Namecheap and did get a reply, but it appears they will only take down a domain with a) a court order, b) potentially a request from law enforcement, or c) a UDRP proceeding: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.icann.org&#x2F;resources&#x2F;pages&#x2F;help&#x2F;dndr&#x2F;udrp-en<p>The problem with options c or especially a is that they&#x27;re costly, and nothing would stop whoever is behind the site from simply registering a new confusingly similar domain.  So, to start with we&#x27;ve submitted a report to ic3.gov, the FBI&#x27;s Internet Crime Complaint Center.  Hopefully if they confirm the site is fraudulent, they can request that Namecheap yank the domain.  I&#x27;ve never submitted such a complaint before though, so I have no idea how responsive they are.<p>Is there anything else we could do to shut these scammers down?
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