Now that the new year has rolled around, I went ahead today and signed the amended Snapnames.com settlement agreement arising out of the Halvarez bidding scandal.

Once I determined based on my own records that all amounts were credited to me for auctions in which Halvarez finished second and once the release was amended to limit it to the activity under the bidder account of  Halvarez I made up my mind that I was going to accept my mid five figure settlement and move on.

I wanted to wait until the new year until I executed the agreement, since I’m not sure what the tax implications of receiving the cash will be, and didn’t want to have to deal with it this April.

I’m taking the funds in the form of a credit, as I’m still actively buying domains off the snapnames platform and expect to be pretty active this year, as I’m seeing some nice domains dropping and expect even more drop will this year with the decline of PPC revenue and the increase in renewal fees.

Could I have filed suit and tried to get more?

Sure, but at the end of the day I do believe that the problem here was created by one rouge employee of the company and not part of a plan of the company itself to boost revenue.

Moreover much of the damage was done prior to Oversee buying the company and there is still no indication that any of this would have come to light if Oversee had not exposed it themselves.

I do think that such corporate conduct should be rewarded rather used as an opportunity to try to  punished the company.

I have no desire to punish Oversee or Snapnames and don’t see anyway their failure would benefit our industry.

The last thing we need is one of the few companies in our industry that has received major capital investment from outside venture capital firms to fail or be a losing venture.

Finally if other problematic bidders are found in the future, I have not waived my rights to seek compensation for their actions.