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Something similar happened to one of my corporations. Somebody targeted by scam the was suspicious and contacted me via LinkedIn. Discovered somebody had setup a completely separate and very legit looking website using a similar domain name (e.g., instead of company.com, it was companyinc.com).

I have no idea if they successfully scammed anybody.

One thing I did that is not mentioned in this article is that I contacted the police. The police took a statement and collected all the relevant files (e.g., the PDF job offers I had been sent).

There was, unfortunately, not much the police could actually do. But having an official police report helped in my next step, which was to start an internet-wide game of whack-a-mole with the scammer's website. I'd identify the hosting company, send them an abuse report, citing the police report, and request the website be taken down. The hosting company would usually comply within 24 hours, then a week or so later the website would reappear using a different host. Lather, rinse, and repeat several times until the scammer gave up (or moved to a different domain that I have not discovered yet).



We had a very similar issue. It wasn't recruiter, but a scammer setup a companyname+(inc).com domain to sell fake products. We went straight for their registrar with a trademark claim and were successfully able to get the domain transferred to us so we could redirect to our actual site. If they are hosting content that is clearly similar to yours, then a trademark claim can be successful. Then, rather than chasing down hosting providers, you only need to deal with it once. This is also a good point to spend a few hours registering any permutations of your domain that are similar enough to cause confusion to prevent this from reoccurring.

This is why the Nissan.com guy could keep the domain, since he wasn't selling cars. If he'd been using the domain that could be argued to be impersonating Nissan the car company, he would have lost ownership.


I wonder if they ever tried to take down your website with their own, phony, police report




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