Auctions of domain names, the registration of which was not renewed by the previous owners, on the GoDaddy site are actively abused by scammers. According to the rules of the site, if the auction winner does not pay for the domain within the allotted time, his bid is canceled and the domain name goes to the bidder who made the second highest bid. In practice, the fraudulent scheme looks something like this: a domain with a potential value of $1,000 is put up for auction. And one of the scammers makes a bet of $10. Immediately his accomplice makes the next bet – $10,000. Other players do not consider it necessary to continue bidding for a domain that is clearly not worth that kind of money. As a result, the winner does not pay the promised $10,000, and the domain goes to the first participant - for the same $10.
The dishonesty of these actions is absolutely clear, but similar situations are repeated over and over again. The Domain Gang, reporting this news, cites the surprising results of several auctions on the GoDaddy site. Thus, the winning bid for the domain X8Bet.com was $67,666, and it was eventually sold for $10. The winning bidder offered $30,278 for the FloHome.com domain, but he sold for $25. The MoonDog.com domain results are $12,500 and $10, respectively. And this list can go on for a long time. Participants in the NamePros professional forum also complain about the same situation. They note that the first attempts of such fraud date back to 2019, but in recent months the scheme has been used extremely actively.
The most surprising thing is that GoDaddy, the world's largest domain registrar, has yet to take any action to correct the situation. But it loses a lot of money at these auctions: it is obvious that any of the domains listed above could have been purchased by a bona fide registrant not for 10 or 25 dollars, but significantly more. There are also obvious measures that could be implemented to at least make life more difficult for scammers. For example, many large trading platforms have long required bank card information from participants when registering. And why Go Daddy doesn't want to go this route remains a mystery.
