Domain Name Wire

Inside Oversee.net v. Howard Nelson Brady, Jr.

Lawsuit sheds more light on bidding scandal.

Earlier today Snapnames and parent company Oversee.net filed a lawsuit against former employee Howard Nelson Brady, Jr. for his alleged scheme of shill bidding and embezzlement.

Much has already been disclosed about Brady’s alleged conduct, but the lawsuit (pdf) provides more details of his alleged deceit.

The suit cites a number of examples of how he tried to dupe other SnapNames employees into thinking that Hank Alvarez was a real customer. In reality, Alvarez was a fictitious person that Brady created, the suit alleges.

In one instance, the suit claims that Brady created a bogus email account for Hank Alvarez and sent an email to his SnapNames email address from that account. He then forwarded that email on to another Snapnames employee to show that Hank Alvarez was a real person.

Much of Brady’s activity was geared toward increasing how much others paid for domain names. He would view their confidential maximum bids and bid a slightly lower amount to increase the amount these other customers paid.

Why the deceit? According to the complaint, Brady earned substantial money by selling SnapNames to Oversee at an inflated price thanks to his revenue-boosting scheme. Additionally, after the company was sold, Brady could have earned up to $1.5 million in an earn out.

Once the earn out period passed, the plaintiffs allege that Brady moved on to embezzle money.

After Oversee completed its purchase of SnapNames and the “earn out” period in which Defendent Brady could have earned additional compensation based on the performance of the SnapNames business expired, Defendant Brady dramatically reduced his shill bidding scheme, and instead started stealing directly from the company.

From August 2005 to Sept 2009, the suit alleges that Brady purchased about 250 domains in which he refunded substantially all of the money — approximately $175,000. Most of this activity occurred in the last year of the period. The embezzlement activity coincided with Brady voluntarily reducing his working hours and taking a pay cut, Oversee claims.

Brady and his lawyer did not immediately respond to a request from Domain Name Wire for comment about the lawsuit.Brady’s lawyer says that they plan to file a full response to the accusations within 30 days.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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Related posts:

1. SnapNames and Oversee.net Sue Nelson Brady aka Halvarez
2. Nelson Brady on SnapNames Scandal
3. Second Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Oversee.net and SnapNames

Tags: nelson brady, oversee.net, Policy & Law, snapnames