An Internet spammer is in court following scams which allegedly netted him £1.5m over a number of years.

The Internet scammer is currently on trial for alleged death threats, made as police and trading officers were closing in on the seedy operation.

The court was told how he ran a bogus registration service for net addresses.

Pretending to be a legitimate agent who could act on behalf of businesses wanting to register a domain name proved a lucrative scam, jurors heard.

But as the net closed on his bogus businesses, he allegedly began threatening police and trading standards staff and it was this that finally landed him in court.

Scam Setup

The scam allegedly began with sending unsolicited spam to thousands of people, offering to register them for the soon-to-be released domain name .eu.

Jurors at Peterborough Crown Court heard how he had enjoyed a lifestyle of designer clothes and helicopter lessons as the scam netted him a fortnightly income of around £200,000.

One customer paid £5,780 to register a list of addresses.

Prosecution lawyers told how the defendant's website claimed the business was located in a state-of-the-art data centre in Canary Wharf. It was actually being run from a terraced house in Cambridgeshire, he said.

The second scam saw the defendant posting letters to people with domain names due for expiry, offering to renew it for a fee.

It is believed he got the information from a database published by Nominet, the company which runs the .uk registry.

The firm won an injunction in November 2003 to prevent the scammer from using its whois database.

Be Aware

Here at Ibex we are committed to giving our customers the best service. We are part of the Tucows system and are ICCAN accredited. Beware of domain name scams such as that described here - always check the ISP for their credentials.