Every once in a while a judge will make a mystifying decision. That’s what happened Thursday in a U.S. District Court. In an unbelievable decision that surprised even Kevin Medina’s attorneys, New Jersey Federal Judge Peter Sheridan ruled that Registerfly should be handed over to defendant Medina – who had been Chief Executive of the Company.

Allegations against Kevin Medina.
Kevin Medina was removed from the CEO post of Registerfly for some pretty seedy allegations. The remaining shareholder of Registerfly John Naruszewicz, alleged that Mr. Medina had been “stealing money from the company since the middle of last year to pay for two Cadillac Escalades, a penthouse apartment in Miami's South Beach, an escort service, and liposuction. In a phone interview, Naruszewicz said Medina used company funds to pay for loads of private expenses. Also, he said Medina was taking customers' money in online transactions and then failing to register the domain names they had paid for. Medina denied misusing company funds and accused Naruszewicz of using fraud to take control of the company.”

Registerfly has one week.
What is known is that complaints filed with ICANN by Registerfly customers are legion. As a result ICANN has issued two formal warnings to Registerfly to either clean up its act or face decreditation. The last warning gave the company one week to make things right.

“It’s a damn shame.”
John Naruszewicz, one of the two who had fired Medina and taken control of the company, doesn't plan to appeal the judge's decision."We lost and it's all over," he says. "The company will implode in days and 1 million domain names are going to be lost. It's a damned shame."

75,000 customers lost access.
According to Business Week, about 75,000 Registerfly customers have lost access to their Web sites. This seems to confirm rumors that a significant amount of customer data kept on Registerfly servers has been corrupted and lost leaving Registerfly management scrambling to find a way to get it back. However it has been reported that ICANN is possession of a vast amount of registrant data. If true, that's at least some good news for Registerfly customers.

I’ll keep you posted.
Rest assured I will be watching this situation and will keep you posted with any new developments.

Go Daddy has been asked to help.
For our part, we have been approached by a number of Registerfly customers asking if we can help in some way. The answer is YES!

A special transfer program for Registerfly customers.
Go Daddy is providing a special transfer program for Registerfly customers who want to move their domains over to Go Daddy. To take advantage of this special program, please click here on the following link: https://www.godaddy.com/registerfly

Very special transfer rates.
Go Daddy will be providing special low transfer rates to Registerfly customers who want to move their domain names. In many instances, when a transfer is requested it can only be done after the customer’s account on Registerfly has been unlocked.

Go Daddy will help customers who have their transfers denied.
Since Registerfly’s servers may be largely inaccessible, most, if not all, transfer requests could be denied. Go Daddy will keep track of these transfer denials and will then petition ICANN and the registries on behalf of all customers who have had denied transfers. Eventually, we will get them approved.

Registerfly customers who transfer will retain whatever unexpired term they had in place with Registerfly, plus they will get an extra year added to the term of the registration after the transfer takes place.

An example.
For example: Assume a customer has a registration with Registerfly that has four (4) years and two (2) months left before it expires. If this customer transfers their registration over to Go Daddy, after the transfer successfully takes place, that customer will then have five (5) years and two (2) months before their domain name expires.

There's also a special deal for SSL certificates.
After I posted my last article on the Registerfly crisis, I was asked to also provide a special deal for Registerfly customers who purchased SSL certificates from Registerfly. After looking at the issue, we decided to offer Registerfly SSL customers a special deal for Go Daddy's SSL certificates. We will be providing those Registerfly customers both discounted SSL rates and an extra year for our SSL certificates. To take advantage of this offer, please click here.

About Go Daddy.
Go Daddy is the world’s largest domain name registrar. We are more than twice the size of our closest competitor. We earned this by providing great prices, an outstanding product offering and the world’s best customer service – all of which is located in the USA. With a few minor exceptions, all of the technology we provide our customers was developed and is maintained right here at Go Daddy. That means when our customers have questions about any of the products they purchased from Go Daddy, they get to call one phone number that rings into the best customer service operation in the world. Our support departments are open 24 hours a day, everyday.

Until next time.