Be Excellent To Each Other

My sister in laws better half had a web domain to run his consultancy from. He took 6 months off after the arrival of my niece and had missed the renewal email.

Somebody else has nicked the domain and also bought an Ipad using his domain and company name. First thing he knew of this was a debt collecting agency wrote to him.

He wants the domain back as he is going back to work and would obviously like the fraud to stop. I would say he has a good case, 3 years of business use with the domain and also the fraud committed by whoever bought the domain

Looking on the web for resolutions it would appear that you either get a lawyer or wade through the ICANN website and do it yourself

Are these the only real options here or is there anything else he can look at?

First step is to get in touch with the police about the fraud, assuming he hasn't already.

After that, I (personally) would get hold of a lawyer who specialises in domain reacquisition, and get ready to swallow a rather sturdy bill. Either that, or change the company name.

It's incredibly time-consuming and costly to try to fight this. Unless it's worth a hell of a lot of money, I would take one of Grim...'s choices. Having worked for a domain registration company in the past, I've spoken to so many people who've suffered the same issue - I cannot remember one happy ending when attempting to do it themselves.