This week the domain industry mourned the death of one of its greats, Igal Lichtman.
The tragic loss of Igal, way before his time, is also a cautionary tale for all domainers, as some of Igal’s prize domains were lost this week as well.
Three domain names owned by Igal’s company, Mrs Jello LLC, expired and were auctioned off this week generating almost $75,000 in sales for the auction companies but nothing for the family of Igal. (these are the only one’s I know of but there could have been more)
Several years ago when Domain Guardians was announced and the concept of having someone watch over and manage your domains after you passed, I thought it was a fantastic idea with the only downside being that so many in our industry are so young.
The day after Igal passed, I got an email from another family that Judi and I knew outside of the domain industry announcing that their father just passed away at 52.
So while we all expect to live until our 80’s or longer, unfortunately life doesn’t always work out that way, and In Igal’s case we are seeing as what is becoming a cautionary tale for all domainers.
This week Vodka.net sold for $20,000, Penis.net which sold for over $5K and Vegans.com sold at $48,000 at SnapNames.com; all were all domain names owned by Mrs. Jello, LLC, all which recently expired and all of which resulted in big paydays for the auction companies and registrars but nothing for the family.
So all domainers need to have a plan in place for someone to watch over and manage their assets which took them a lifetime to acquire.
It could be a well informed family member or many in the domain industry who would watch over the domains, get them renewed and monetize and sell domains on behalf of the family.
Bottom line no matter your age, or your health, its never too early to have a plan for your assets including your domains, so the value of your work go to the benefit of your loved ones and not the auction houses.
RIP Igal.
I am a client of DomainGuardians.com I find it comforting to have a company who has been in the industry for many years be in control should anything happen to me. Timely post Mike!
This is scary. There domains are all registered at Moniker.
Can’t someone contact Igal’s family and/or Moniker?
I have actually been thinking about this since my daughter was born.
I want her to be financially secured if anything happens to me…
And I know that Igal was actually using Namejet to auction off his domains so these are definitely not scheduled auctions.
I understand that someone from the family has reached out to Moniker.
I have no idea what the results will be from that but these names were in the delete cycle while Igal was very sick but prior to his death.
and 5 or 7 LLL.com
more in the line to drop
the middleguy wich has no merit takes the money.
Mike, I informed Ari Goldberger on the matter and was hoping to keep the situation under wraps until it got properly addressed. But now you’re shining on it all the public light it could possibly get. It’s like announcing a Windows vulnerability before it’s fixed.
I thought MS Jello was incorporated. Was it a one-man show then ?
Igal had a heart attack years ago and he didn’t die suddenly from cancer. I find it very hard to believe he didn’t do anything to prevent this before his death.
Acro
I let Ari Partner, Larry Fischer know about this before the funeral as well, however after thinking about it I wrote the post not to call attention to these domains but for people to start to make arrangements for their own property.
Besides these domains are great and getting plenty of attention already regardless of who owned them.
Kate most of domainers are a one-man show…
I am personally working with Namejet and Igal’s family to protect any/all of his domains at eNom. All of Igal’s eNom accounts are being monitored daily and have been frozen until his wife returns from Igal’s burial in Israel. Any domains that have gone to auction on NameJet have been cancelled/pulled.
RIP Igal!
Bari
Good to hear
Of course you are on top of it, still the best
thanks
It is easy to see how this can happen.
Anyone who has had a potentially life ending illness knows that you think about only two things.
1) Getting well
2) Your family
Whether a domain name is going to expire or not means very little at that time.
Michael thank you for the post, I am immediately setting up a list of assets, passwords and suggested actions to be taken upon my demise or incapacity.
For the love of my family.
“Time is like a river”. You cannot touch the water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again. Enjoy every moment of life.
Howard Neu offered some advice on point here: http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/2010/05/think-before-you-die-com.html
I take at least 20% of each domain sale and apply it to renewals – I look at it as another “tax”. And with that discipline in place everything else comes natural – like a $1MM term policy I started 4 years ago.
THis is very good food for thought as to what makes business sucessful – it is not about making money – it is about mitigating your loses.
@ acro- may have been in better light the result came out the way it could have been best hoped to. Sometimes publicity is all you need, all-be-it doesnt mean the outcome was due directly or indirectly but possibly assists.
@kate llc is limited liability company and I had mine was I was sole (at least in Florida few years back).
@jrzeygirl – Thank you and entity for morals and ethics.
Our thoughts and prayers are with Igal’s family and friends during this difficult time. As so well stated by many others, Igal was truly a well-respected pioneer in our industry and we will miss him. Our team is working closely with a representative of the family and have renewed all names expiring soon. Unless otherwise directed by his family, no further domains will expire.
Michele Van Tilborg
SnapNames & Moniker
Michele Van Tilborg & The Other Moniker/SnapNames Crooks,
Your thoughts and prayers were not with Igal and his family, after all the hundreds of thousands of dollars in business he gave to you over the years. So please, for the sake of the dignity of Igal and the readers on this blog, call it how it is…at least Igal would respect that.
Beware of keeping names at Moniker, because they will be auctioned too soon. Other registrars that don’t have a sister auction house would have let the family redeem the domain for a much longer period of time. Snapnames took advantage of the situation, and they will suffer for that.
I can say that Bari from Enom and Matt from NameJet are a different story. ENOM AND NAMEJET ARE MUCH MORE CIVALIZED PEOPLE and worked with the family to solve problems, unlike Snapnames salting wounnds. Worst off, the SNAPNAMES account had money in it, they just claim the domain(s) was not on AUTO-RENEW!!!!
Anonymous has much more information on Snapnames. Anonymous suggests Snapnames makes it right while the domains are still under Moniker control. Anonymous suggests they do this for their own sake.
BE AWARE WHAT MONIKER/SNAPNAMES WILL DO WHEN YOU OR YOUR SPOUSE GETS SICK/DIES! God Forbid! I’m just saying.
Anonymous.
As noted by the above poster, I wonder if there weren’t shenanigans. We’ve all come to accept rather grotesque things in this industry as being par for the course we all choose to play on, but picking a dead mans pocket would be about the worst I’ve ever seen. It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened.
We aren’t all blessed with long lives.
We die, some of us too soon, most of us, suddenly. As we see here, ‘autorenew’ isn’t an adequate safeguard for valuable domains in the cesspool that is the domain ‘industry’.
I maintain several different registrant identities for my own reasons. Domaintools is of absolutely no help to track down what I own. I guess I’d better update some things with my attorney, to be sure none of this happens to my family in the event I sail off tomorrow.
If there is one lesson to be learned, it’s to not allow expensive domains to lean on their renewal date. Renew them all at least a couple years in advance, so your estate has time to sort things out in the event of your sudden passing. I’ll be taking care of a few, right now.
I wonder how many Palestinian children and women Mr.Igal Lichtman killed and bombed when he worked as an officer for the Israeli Air Force
B.ElZA. it’s too late to ask him. Have any other assumptions?
Thanks Bari (and others) for doing the right thing… in Remembrance of “Mrs. Jello”
@ B. EIZA,
That remark of yours needs to be addressed.
It doesn’t matter whether you are sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians — as I myself am, having spent part of my childhood living in Palestine / Israel. It doesn’t even matter, in this context, if the late Mr. Lichtman’s participation in the Israeli Air Force did or did not result in the deaths of civilians. Yes, gruesome atrocities have been perpetrated in that conflict — by both sides. This is not the place for politics. Nor for judging individuals we don’t know who lived in that troubled place and time.
If you feel a sincere respect for human life — for those Palestinian children and women who have been bombed (perhaps NOT by Igal Lichtman and perhaps NOT through a policy he endorsed) — then please show that respect for human life by observing a proper humane silence at the time of a man’s passing. I never met Igal Lichtman, but I understand from people who knew him that he was a generous and welcoming person. No matter who he was, this is a time for his surviving family and friends to make peace with the loss of a person they cared for — not for simplistic condemnations.
Sorry for butting in. But not to have answered your remarks would reflect badly on me.
@Joseph Peterson
I can assure you that I have no respect at all to anyone who has been involved in killing innocent humans(regardless of their color, religion, ethnicity, nationality…etc) by any means or in anyway ,at anytime or in any place.
@ B.EIZA,
You paint with a very broad brush. All wars throughout history have contributed to the deaths of innocent people. Some wars are worse than others. Not everyone who fought in a war is a criminal simply by association.
The point, however, is not to interfere with those who are paying their respects to a friend or family member who has just passed away … as if you had shown up uninvited to a funeral simply to shout accusations.
@Joseph Peterson
My rephrased statement of my first comment is as follows :
I wonder IF Mr.Igal Lichtman killed and bombed innocent Palestinian children and women, participated in that or caused that to happen at anytime or in any place when he served as an officer for the Israeli Air Force!
How about instead of phrasing and rephrasing your stupid nonsense, you learn not to be a complete fucking retard by interjecting your politics in a matter involving the recently deceased.
For whomever Mr. Lichtman did or didn’t bomb during his time in Israel’s Air Force, I, for one, am sorry he didn’t bomb you.
There is one other thing you can do to help mitigate this AND make more money when you are alive.
Domains at Fabulous are sent to Namejet when they expire. Fabulous have a long grace period of 30 days after expiration during which you can renew the domains at no extra cost and the nameservers will be left pointing to your site during this period.
The best thing about Fabulous, is that if you request this via their support, they will give you about 60% of the proceeds of any Namejet auctions of your expiring domains. One man’s garbage is another one’s treasure and I have occasionally received payments this way for domains I deliberately let expire.
Even if you do nothing else, at least 60% of the auctions proceeds of domains you left expire will get returned to you in this case.
@Gordo Granudo
Shame on you for promoting Nazism and promoting bombing innocent and peaceful people like me
Bari and Michelle thanks for locking down the domains until the family can get on it.
B.ElZA
War is hell, maybe you heard that one
Not one Conflict, War, Military action, is without causalities and the warriors who are now rightfully referred to as hero’s go to battle by order of their government on behalf of family and country try to control yourself from make many more idiotic comments
That’s reassuring to know – thanx for taking up for a customer’s family!
I can tell you that I have been working closely with Bari Meyerson from Enom and Drake Harvey from Snapnames and they are doing what they can.
Snapnames policy, whether I like it or not is once it goes to auction and has bids they will not pull it out and must let the auction conclude which is what happened with the lost names.
Snapnames/Moniker did use 10K of their own money to pull out any remaining names in redemption and names that were about to expire.
Bari is Bari, always helpful in any and every way possible. She is the class of this indutsty and continues to prove that.
There are quite a few working in the background here with Igal’s family and the damage has now been limited to what is in this article.
Adam Dicker
So Dicker was “working closely” on this, did anyone hear from the family, was money misappropriated?
Adam
On the Moniker side nice to see the reaction but we do have the Glue.com auction that was a domain that went into pending delete and for which the auction was started and which was pulled after $20K+ in bidding due to an issue involving between by the registrant and Moniker. (according to the registrant)
If that is is true, then there is recent situation where a domain was pulled out of an Snap auction.
Anyway the post of the story was to alert all domainers that they have to have a plan in place to manage their domains in case for when they pass away or even if they are incapacitated for a while
Hi Guys –
3 weeks ago I won LorenzoLaw.com at NameJet – it was put into my enom account – I used it for 8-10 days – and then NameJet notified me an error was made and they had the right to give the domain back to previous owner.
If I wanted, I could have really fucked this deal up by moving the domain out of eNom- but instead I relied on Karma – and more Karma – knowing the same circumstances could happen to me or in this case the Igal estate.
To cut through the HORSESHIT Snap / Moniker CAN cancel these auctions after the fact and refund the buyers if they want. Its just a matter of how sleezy they are with empty words !!!
@Mike Berkins,
I agree with you 100%, but that’s the best Moniker/Snapnames would do and they were contacted while 4 out of the 5 names were still in auction.
The right thing to do would have been to cancel vegans.com as well as the others even if they closed. That’s what I would have done, but I am not Moniker/Snapnames.
Are you being reasonable? Igal Lichtman didn’t have a plan in place, and now Moniker has to sully its reputation to rescue and undo poor planning. My experience, in life, it doesn’t work like that. At least, Moniker staff has the heads up and is rescuing what is left. Just my opinion.
“Snapnames policy, whether I like it or not is once it goes to auction and has bids they will not pull it out and must let the auction conclude which is what happened with the lost names.”
Must be a new policy, as that was not the case with Glue.com recently…
Brad
@ Louise
There are consequences to doing the legally correct thing as opposed to the morally correct thing.
Lincoln understood this and lead our country to greatness.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
So Jeff Schneider –
“There are consequences to doing the legally correct thing as opposed to the morally correct thing.”
Yes – you are correct – and this event simply encapsulates the greed, ugliness and sleeze in domain auctions.
Personally – for me – my record will demonstrate I would rather acquire a domain from someone who already bought it off a snap auction – rather than be in the auction in the first place 🙂
@ Brian Wick,
Do you even fathom the fact that you are projecting your own opinion of greed and ugliness onto an Industry as diverse as the domaining Industry. If you own a website of any caliber from Apple to Zerox you are indeed a Domainer. Are you aware of this?
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
The anecdotal solution to the much bigger problem of registrar greed is simply keep renewing your domains deep – several years (of property taxes in advance) – as I do – and do not rely on “auto renew”.
Another way to look at it is how many banks lend money on a home loan – “hoping” the loan goes into default so they can repo the home, pay any back taxes (like domain renewals) and auction it off again ?
@ Adam Dicker,
I agree Adam they should do the right thing and rescind the transactions. When Monte was running things he would have cut this off at the pass immediately. This is a PR Clusterfuck and only reinforces their bad press. My guess is they will knucle under to limit damage control.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Hello MHB,
I house some of my domains at Moniker. Having said that is about as cozy and fuzzy as I will get about this whole fiasco. For registrars to be active sellers of Domains is a travesty, in the first place. Its like giving the keys to the henhouse to a fox. I have loathed this whole ponzi scam since it started years ago. It takes a death situation to bring attention to this highly questionable practice.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
I have renewed my best 1% domains for 2 years and up – some for 10 years. That ensures that if I expire, my domains don’t expire with me !!!
Hello Davinderpal Bhatia
Everybody has their strategic reasonings for doing things. Some may deliberately renew yearly because they know their name will be on many Drop artists wish list or watch lists. The registrars in turn get feedback from the vulture capitalists on what they percieve as Prime Prey in requests to be first in line for loose Booty.
By the way does anybody here think they know the Intrinsic values of the 75k for the five names in question? My opinion Vegans.com = 10x 48k.
Do you see why Moniker is Blinking at rescinding??
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
well for the estibot.com lovers the domain appraises for $75K
Hello MHB,
Appraised Values reflect Spec Buyers opinions only, Thank God !
Vegans.com is a whole Industry group Bristling with millions of followers. End Users who know how to leverage Digital Assets are hungry to have Vegans as a captive audience. Vegans is a Pure Play as compared to SEO manipulated Manufactured Plays found at Search Engines.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
It should be noted that Moniker/Snapnames in the end did the right thing and returned Vegans.com and the other names to the family. Moniker/Sanpnames went above and beyond here to do the right thing.
I am working closely with Igal’s wife to ensure no names get lost from here on in.
Adam Dicker
Adam
Good to Hear
Thanks for doing the right thing and working with the family and thanks to Snapnames.com/Moniker.com for doing the right thing
For everyone else, learn from this because its doubtful everyone is going to have a guy like Adam go to bat for them so plan ahead
after the fact? and the bad publicity?