TheE man who owns the domain name bertieahern.com, which has been operating as a pornography site, was the subject of a fraud suit brought by the Ohio state attorney general's office and a recent "cybersquatting" case brought by US online health information giant Healtheon, The Irish Times has learned.
Mr Simon Kapenda, a Namibian immigrant living in Ohio, is the director of Trotwood, Ohio-based Kapenda Corp, which is listed as the registrant of transnames.com, the owner of bertieahern.com. Transnames has been trying to auction the domain name as part of a package that includes thetaoiseach.com and marymcaleesesucks.com, and bertieahernsucks.com.
Several weeks ago, it was widely reported that Mr Ahern received a request for a substantial sum of money in exchange for being given the ownership of bertieahern.com. The Taoiseach said he believed the query came from an individual associated with Transnames. Following the reports - some of which appeared on the Net and in US and British media - Transnames said it would auction the site instead. Transnames said it had received a bid of $5 million for the sites, but the bidder, who had placed the bid under the name "Bertie Ahern", reneged. For several weeks, Transnames ran a message threatening to sue the individual for fraud. Transnames included the e-mail exchange it had with "Bertie Ahern", in one of which the purported Taoiseach stated that the $5 million for the site had been cleared by his "government" (sic).
A person who responded to questions put to the Transnames contact e-mail address, simonkap@aol.com, denied that Transnames had any association with Mr Kapenda or Kapenda Corp. But Mr Kapenda used the same unique identifying number, KS5838, to register both transnames.com and kapenda.com. Kapenda.com is the website for Kapenda Corporation and lists Mr Kapenda as its director. The unique identifier is known in Internet jargon as a "handle", and is used by an individual as a form of shorthand for registering multiple domain names. While a domain name registrant can give false name and address information for a given domain, a handle is unique and a direct link to the individual who applied for a domain name.
Mr Kapenda was the subject of a New York Times report in November, 1998, when it was reported that his company, World Education Access, had failed to pay tuition fees as promised through a scholarship programme. Students, many of them African, were charged a registration fee of $799 to $999, and then a quarterly fee of $150-$225 in order to have their tuition paid by WEA. In January 1999 the Ohio state attorney general sued Mr Kapenda on the grounds of running a fraudulent scholarship programme. The case received a "consent judgment" in August last year, which means Mr Kapenda had not acknowledged any wrongdoing but would pay restitution - a total of $41,261 - to 40 students.
Mr Kapenda was the subject of a cybersquatting lawsuit filed by Healtheon, an online company created by Netscape founder Mr Jim Clark, which uses the domain name WebMD.com. Mr Kapenda was charged with registering the names usawebmd.com, ukwebmd.com and iwebmd.com and trying to sell them to WebMD. The suit stated that Mr Kapenda was a cybersquatter who registered names similar to trademark names and tried to sell them to the trademark owners. The case was settled on May 17th when the judge dismissed the action when Mr Kapenda agreed to transfer the names to WebMD.
In an exchange of e-mails with The Irish Times, the person at simonkap@aol.com denied they were Mr Simon Kapenda and denied any connection between transnames.com and either kapenda.com or Mr Kapenda. The person also threatened legal action if such a connection were implied. However, during the course of the exchange, Transnames told The Irish Times it had removed the pornography site and replaced it with a notice that it would now give Mr Ahern the four domain names if he will pay the $35 transfer fee per name.
A spokesman for the Department of the Taoiseach said the situation with the bertieahern.com domain was "contemptuous" and that it was seeking legal advice on further action.
A note on the bertieahern.com site yesterday said Transnames had received offers from seven different Bertie Aherns offering to buy the names.
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