HARDWAREPUB.COM DOMAIN NAME HIJACKED

[Keefe]

In November, 2001, I bought the domain name hardwarepub.com from the owner at that time, Trevor Gehman.  He transferred ownership of the domain from himself to me, Keefe John.  I paid for the transfer of the domain and the addition of two years
into it.  At this point, the domain was good through 06/30/03.

Shortly thereafter, the domain was transferred to a partner account of Registrars.com -- the partner account of Netwurx, INC., 35 East Sumner Street, Hartford, WI 53027.  I transferred it to this account because I was employed by Netwurx and they were able to offer me cheaper pricing than direct registration through Registrars.com.  The domain was still, of course, registered with my ownership information.  The monies for these transfers were taken directly out of my paycheck by Netwurx.

In February of 2002 I was released of employment by Netwurx, INC.  I had about 4-5 domains through Netwurx at this time.

In early May, I attempted to transfer these names to a different registrar, ItsYourDomain.  The transfers were refused by NSI (The domains were now listed in Netwurx's partner account at VeriSign (aka NSI), because Registrars.com was bought out by them).  NSI told me that the transfers were being denied because Netwurx did not pay their partner account bill.  NSI further informed me that they could not help me, because as Netwurx was a partner, I had to deal with them directly.

I contacted Netwurx about this issue and they refused to help me at all.  At one point they said they would release the domains to a new, direct account in my name that wouldn't be affected by their non-payment status with NSI, within 2-3 days.  I waited a week and heard nothing from them.  At this point I emailed them back asking for the status of the domain issue.  I received an email a few hours later, direct from Peter F. Maher, Jr., President of Netwurx, INC.  It read:

"I am sick of dealing with you.  If you call here again and I find out, I
will register all of your domains and keep them.  I have gone through and
deleted ALL of your domains.  They are now in the open access pool, go get
them if you want them...You handle it."

I immediately called VeriSign to see if they could help.  I was able to get through to a Tier 2 support team member.  He explained that the partner abused the power of his account and that he could send in a request for the domain to be pulled back into the system -- into a new account that wasn't touchable by Netwurx.  The next day when I called back they said that they could not pull the domain back, but they might be able to just re-register it for me right away.  I called back again the next day and they claimed there was nothing that they could do since the "delete command" was already sent to the global registry.  They suggested purchasing SnapNames Snapback service.  I purchased this service a few days ago and had been checking the domain religiously using whois.

I checked whois for hardwarepub.com this morning and it is now registered to a completely new organization called "buydomains.com".  When you surf to www.hardwarepub.com, it redirects to buydomains.com where my domain is "FOR SALE".

I called VeriSign again today and they gave me the canned response of, "Please e-mail customerservice@networksolutions.com with an explanation of your problem.."  I also called Domainzoo, the registrar that hardwarepub.com is now registered with. They said that I should contact VeriSign.

So, as you can see, I'm getting the run-around, and am not sure what to do here.  Someone PLEASE advise me as to what I should do in this matter.  My domain name was taken away from me without my permission.  It was hijacked.  This was not right.  Please, PLEASE help.  Call me at 262-893-9518 or respond via e-mail.

Thank you,

Keefe