5 year sentence for stealing a domain name

Daniel Goncalves a Union County man has been sentenced to a term of 5 years imprisonment for the theft and sale of the domain name P2P.com, in what is believed to be the first domain name theft case of its kind.

It was alleged that in 2006 Goncalves gained unauthorised access to an AOL email account operated by the registrant of P2P.com, in order to authorise a transfer of the domain name. Once the name was transferred Goncalves apparently sold the domain name on Ebay for $111,000. He was later arrested on 30 July 2009 and was indited for a range of offences including computer theft. He plead guilty to those charges in 2010 and was this week sentenced.

The domain name has been returned to its rightful owners and the Court ordered that Goncalves pay an amount in restitution to the victims.