14 ms·
Man sentenced to prison after assault of domain name owner who refused to sell
- ThinkBeat 7y agoThat seems unusually harsh. A lot of violent rapes get less of a sentence.
- gdfasfklshg4 7y agoIf I understand the article properly he threatened someone at gunpoint! That's a serious crime. > I'm certain he's also criminally liable for the victim getting shot in the leg. I missed that. Yeah this article discusses an armed robbery where a firearm was discharged and someone was injured. That is a serious crime that upon conviction results in a serious sentence in any jurisdiction.
- nkozyra 7y agoI'm certain he's also criminally liable for the victim getting shot in the leg. It's a violent crime with a lot of premeditation.
- de_watcher 7y agoArmed database robbery.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dominotw 7y agohad to be done for the state ;0
- jessaustin 7y agoThe most bizarre aspect of this is that all of this happened around Iowa State... the most minor-league podunk school in the Big Twelve (there are two lies in that name). Social media pornographers should aim higher than that.
- scandox 7y agoIt also sounds like the person he commissioned to commit the crime was killed in the course of the crime and the victim was also shot in the leg!
- booblik 7y agoIt is clearly stated that he survived the gunshots
- nkozyra 7y agoI must be missing it, the last thing I see about the situation is > The victim shot Hopkins multiple times in the chest. He then contacted law enforcement.
- saalweachter 7y agoWithout excusing the article for confusing several people and requiring follow up research to answer an obviously related question, in my experience if someone dies it will almost-always be explicitly stated in the article; newspapers are far more like to remember to say "shot and killed" or "shot... killing him instantly" or "died of his injuries", and far more likely to cut a sentence about an auxiliary party's recovery when editing.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agojustice.gov isn't a newspaper.
- jessaustin 7y agoThis is a lesson for would-be violent extortionists: .22 is not an intimidating caliber.
- paulgb 7y agoIt is clear that the victim survived his gunshots but Hopkins' fate is not mentioned in the press release linked. It turns out he did survive and got a 20 year sentence. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndia/pr/cedar-rapids-felon-sentenced-twenty-years-federal-prison-after-attempting-extort https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndia/pr/cedar-rapids-felon-sent...
- Digit-Al 7y agoI thought the same until I read the article. The headline is pretty crap tbh. It wasn't a normal domain hijacking, he sent in an armed accomplice who pointed his gun at the victims head and threatened to kill him if he didn't transfer it. The victim was injured during a struggle and the accomplice was shot dead.
- yardie 7y agoThe accomplice is not dead. He has a 20 year sentence.
- theandrewbailey 7y agoThat info is not mentioned in this article, merely that he was shot multiple times in the chest, then is never mentioned again.
- yardie 7y agoI think they switched articles. It was there when I read it the first time. It's not the same article when I go back to the link. Something definitely changed.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- moralestapia 7y agoPetty crimes can exponentially escalate if some particular aggravants are present. Example: 1. Steal something from a store. 2. Bring a gun. 3. Show it. 4. Discharge it. 5. Injure someone. 6. Kill someone. Each of these things make your punishment much harsher, even if your initial thing was to just steal a chocolate bar (1).
- yardie 7y agoConspiracy gets you the same amount of time as the perpetrator. Gun escalation adds at minimum 5 more years. Concurrently, this sounds about right. Of course this guy is an idiot. The victim bought the domain around the same time he started his “brand” so he may have been squatting. File a trademark and be done with it.
- consp 7y agoConsidering he used it for legitimate purposes (according to the article) that would likely be a mute point, especially if the did not operate in the same entrepreneurial space.
- moftz 7y agoIt sounds like he was using it to promote concerts which seems similar enough to how the main "do it for state" guy was using it to promote parties in the same town. He likely could have gotten it from a trademark suit but was probably too dumb to realize that.
- true_religion 7y agoIn order to file a trademark suit, you need a trademark, and it does not retroactively cover other existing competitors using similar terms.
- celticmusic 7y agomoot point, not mute.
- noeltock 7y agoI thought some NLG app created this headline, but it's real life.
- ddelt 7y agoJesus. I’m really impressed that the person who legitimately owned the domain was able to regain control of the gun and stop the attacker.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoThe guy was not bright. Someone orders you at gunpoint to transfer your domain name... you do it. Less risk of dying and the ICANN dispute resolution is going to be really straightforward.
- Invictus0 7y agoThe article says he was pistol whipped multiple times even though he was complying with the gunman. He saw an opportunity and took it, and it's totally unfair to criticize his actions in such a high pressure situation from the comfort of your keyboard.
- fortran77 7y agoRelevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc77--BjFYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc77--BjFYQ
- 52-6F-62 7y agoI've never faced a gun, so take my words with a grain of salt here: I thought the old ...advice... was if the attacker has a gun, you charge—if they attacker has a knife, you run. I'm sure that carries some qualifiers, though... It's a pretty wild story for being about a website domain name.
- kls 7y agoI have been fired on twice (I live in FL it comes with the territory of being a Florida Man) TLDR; in a 10ftx10ft room I want a knife. Yes a gun is not a reactionary weapon you have to pull the trigger, it takes time to process that the victim has now moved to being the attacker and usually if you are within arms reach it is too late for the original attacker to react and pull off the shot before he has lost at least total control of the gun. This is why cops maintain distance when they have someone at gunpoint. Conversely a knife is a reactionary weapon if you jump at me and I flinch you get cut. Not a whole lot of ways to disarm a knife unless the attacker is actively attacking with it, thus exposing his arm. This is why 9 times out of 10 in a fight between a person with a gun and a person with a knife, at striking distance, the person with the gun will fair far worse than the person with the knife. The person with the gun has to reorient and shoot again, the person with the knife just has to flail. Knife also leave more damaging wounds when used as a penetrating weapon and have more chance of hitting vitals or an artery. Here is a great training video of how effective a knife is against someone armed with a gun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbnSTW7Ar44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbnSTW7Ar44
- stilley2 7y agoI'm curious how he thought he would get away with it. If the plan was successful, he'd control the domain name, which seems like pretty damning evidence.
- goldcd 7y agoIf he'd survived. If say he'd been killed after the transfer, I'm not sure Police would have checked to see if the victim had made any domain name transfers prior to the home invasion.
- Nextgrid 7y agoWould you (or anyone with even half a brain) risk a murder conviction on the basis of "I'm not sure police would check"? Especially considering there wouldn't have been any obvious motive for the killing which would make them investigate further. Not to mention, owning the domain is a permanent record, so even if they don't check it immediately, the evidence can always resurface years later.
- throwawaymath 7y agoRationality is already on holiday when you decide to steal a domain name at gunpoint.
- ryanlol 7y agoAnd this domain name in particular...
- rumanator 7y ago> Would you (or anyone with even half a brain) risk a murder conviction on the basis of "I'm not sure police would check"? No one with half a brain would risk an assault conviction for a bloody domain name transfer. But here we are, dumbfounded as we can possibly be.
- 7y ago
- kristofferR 7y agoWhat a weird angle. Most people reading the title are going to think this is about some computer tomfoolery, not violence.
- np_tedious 7y agoI can confirm. I thought exactly that until I read it
- criddell 7y agoYeah, I don't think it was the plotting that got him 14 years, it was: > Hopkins put the firearm against the victim’s head and ordered him to follow the directions on the demand note. Hopkins then pistol whipped the victim several times in the head.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- traderjane 7y agoNo, Hopkins got 20 years. "Polo" got 14. It should've been the other way around because Polo was the one who exercised leadership in the crime.
- wayoutthere 7y agoThe title intentionally makes it sound like the 14 years is an overreaction, so that your reaction is "wtf" and you click on the link. It also buries the fact that the victim managed to wrestle the gun away and kill his attacker (who was the cousin of the man sentenced to 14 years in prison). So yeah, he wasn't sentenced to 14 years for stealing a domain; he was sentenced to 14 years for concocting a criminal scheme that got his cousin killed. Which isn't quite as juicy as the mental image of some Instagram bro kidnapping and shooting some rando (the victim was shot in the leg during the struggle).
- ne0flex 7y agoAfter looking into the case a little more, it appears that Hopkins actually survived [1]. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. [1]https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/public-safety/cedar-rapids-man-sentenced-to-20-years-for-pistol-whipping-shooting-man-in-extortion-attempt-to-gain-ownership-of-internet-domain-20180613 https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/public-safety/cedar-...
- userbinator 7y agoHopkins was a convicted felon who lived in a homeless shelter at the time. I know this is going to be controversial, but I have only two words to say to that: death penalty.
- PrimeDirective 7y agoI know this is not going to be controversial: seriously, fuck you. You can't open a serious discussion on killing people.
- userbinator 7y agoThis guy was a convicted felon. He already had one chance.
- cooljacob204 7y agoWell he was shot multiple times in the chest so maybe that happened. But fuck the death penalty. Justice system is too imperfect for one.
- theandrewbailey 7y agoHis felony conviction was over perjury. Unless he's had some other violent past, I highly doubt most people would consider the death penalty appropriate (I don't think that's appropriate here). > Hopkins was a convicted felon as the result of a 2006 conviction for perjury in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. > https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndia/pr/cedar-rapids-felon-sentenced-twenty-years-federal-prison-after-attempting-extort https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndia/pr/cedar-rapids-felon-sent...
- celticmusic 7y agoThe guy was willing to walk into a man's home and put a gun to his head.
- 7y ago
- Pigo 7y agoWhy didn't he just buy doitforstate.christmas?
- olalonde 7y agoThis is so mind boggling and sad... It was over a pretty average domain name (doitforstate.com) and there's no way those guys would have gotten away with it even if the victim had been silenced.
- pcurve 7y agoThe problem is the tactic he used. "A man who enlisted his cousin to break into a Cedar Rapids man’s home and order him at gunpoint to transfer an Internet domain" If this was just phising attack from phone and keyboard it would be slap on wrist
- tyingq 7y agoPeople do get very emotionally involved with domain names. I bought an expired domain some time ago for something like $200. The previous owner had apparently not intended for it to expire. I didn't know that until he contacted me. I was sympathetic, so I told him what I paid, and offered to sell it back for $200 + $100 for my effort to start over, migrate stuff, etc. I got a tirade of cursing and accusations back for my trouble.
- saiya-jin 7y agoWow, some people are quite something, acting like whole universe revolves around them. I guess I would respond (in rather forced) polite manner that you are disappointed by his reaction, that he should take steps to have more control of his emotions for his own good, that because of his insults you are hereby stopping any other communication with him, unless he offers 100x more as compensation for his hurtful actions. We all can do our little to teach a-holes of this world a lesson or two in good manners. Nothing crazy or vengeful, but something they can and should take as a lesson to become better human beings. Or suffer, their choice. Even most broken people usually understand that kind of basic logic.
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoThe lack of self awareness in your post is fucking astonishing.
- tyingq 7y agoIt's petty, but I didn't respond. I just extended the registration to 10 years :)
- cgriswald 7y agoHow sure are you it wasn't an attempted scam? For some reason scammers seem to get really abusive like that. Totally a tangent, but I was once at a time share presentation (I was a stupid kid and they got me in with some free cash or something) and they wanted about $30K for this timeshare which definitely wasn't worth $30K. Hell, the house I was living in ALL the weeks of a year was only about $100K. When I was like, "I can't afford that" they started talking to me about how this $30K timeshare was a great investment. I responded like, "If I had $30K to invest, there are better things to invest in that don't cost me hundreds per year in management fees." The guy brought over his boss who screamed in my face, basically telling me I'm too stupid to invest $30K and I'm wasting his time. I looked around, and everyone was looking at him. I thought to myself, "Dude, you just nuked every possible sale in this room for a sale that was never going to happen."
- captainredbeard 7y agoThe thought of dying after a DNS transfer is plausible.
- izzydata 7y agoI appreciate the change of the title and using the word "man" instead of "influencer".
- tomp 7y agoI think "influencer" gives more context and is less "implied" sexist, in addition to being in the original title.
- izzydata 7y agoMaybe, but any term besides influencer feels better as it doesn't give this thug some kind of credit for being a pseudo celebrity. Call him an internet vlogger if you must.
- RaceWon 7y agoRegistering a .com with a simple additional word such as "doitforstatedudes" and then spamming Google would have gotten him to page 1. Black hat SEO works.
- jdhawk 7y ago> spamming Google hu? like buying a ton of paid links?
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agoI was under the impression that blackhat SEO only worked 5 or more years ago. Aren't those days completely gone?
- toxican 7y agoBlackhat SEO methods from 5+ years ago may not work anymore, but it's a cat/mouse game, so there are certainly modern methods that work like a charm until Google catches up again. It's like adblocking. 5+ years ago it was generally enough to target HTML elements with an ID of "advertising-wrapper" or something obvious like that. But ad networks and the sites that implement them got smart and started using generic or randomized IDs so that would work. Then the new method was blocking known advertising domains. Now some of them are starting to serve ads from the same domain you access the site through.
- CivBase 7y agoI was attending Iowa State Universiry when the "Do it for State" thing kicked off. I never looked it up myself, but I heard the occasional reference to it around campus so it must have been somewhat popular. A relative of mine who works as an administrator at ISU also complained about it at the time. It's not a great thing to have associated with your school, although there isn't much they could do about it. I thought it was a one-off thing. Now I'm just glad I never needed to associate with that guy.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoOHH! It’s “sports”. Here I was wondering what doitforstate meant.
- KingMachiavelli 7y agoFunny, I bet doitforstat.es is available. (well maybe not now)
- Balanceinfinity 7y agoIn answer to the obvious question: How did he think he would get away with this? What was his end game? The only answers are (1) people don't commit crimes unless they think they will get away with it - everyone in prison had a plan for avoiding prosecution, and (2) There are some really really stupid people in the world who simply can't see or project beyond one or two steps. This may be because of drug use or environmental conditions (lead paint), or because they just aren't super bright. The world is safer with him in prison.
- MS90 7y agoParty focused social media site, college kids, and a homeless felon that went full Raising Arizona with pantyhose on his head before being disarmed and shot with his own gun Probably a combination of drugs and stupidity, though I'm not sure which element was more influential.
- Jamwinner 7y agoI know plenty of people who have been to jail and or prison. Most said they gave zero thought to concequences. Be it rage, addiction, or opprotunity, the usual impetus for the crime that gets caught is usually ill-considered at best. Not expecting to get caught is very distinct from expecting not to get caught.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agothat is very interesting: it explains a lot.
- appwiz 7y agoLong version of this story - https://onezero.medium.com/the-influencer-and-the-hit-man-6c3905efd3c3 https://onezero.medium.com/the-influencer-and-the-hit-man-6c...
- ransom1538 7y agoI wanted a specific domain name of a deceased loved one. I approached the domain parker and asked what they wanted for it. He wanted 200k and escrow. I offered $50. He took my $50.
- chance_state 7y agoHow common was the name? I assume at least fairly common if he had such a high initial ask.
- 72deluxe 7y ago21st Century Fox?
- duxup 7y agoI ran into a small community of domain squatters or speculators or whatever you want to call folks who buy them up purely in order to sell them at a profit. The level of amateurism / folks just looking for a quick couple dollars was pretty high and what they asked for / got, even based on their own stories, was all over the map. Many of them didn't care about what they initially ask for even at the risk of scaring off a sale. A lot seemed to be kids or folks with limited resources playing it as a game for fun / in the hopes of striking it rich.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zebraflask 7y agoIt's largely a game or done for the novelty value, I think, for many of them - kind of like buying a certificate that says you named a star or an asteroid. I ran across one that had my name as a .com (something I'd obviously want), had a bunch of back and forth for several years, once or twice every year, and eventually they realized - ya know - nobody with this name is ever going to pay the exorbitant price they wanted, then they let it lapse. Picked it up for $10 or so, instead of $15,000+. Some of the very short domain names that map to abbreviated company names in China can still be valuable, or if they're somehow truly unique, but for the most part, domain squatting is a dead end for 99% of the domain names at anything less than a very large scale.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoWhy wasn't "Polo" done for conspiracy to murder
- defen 7y agoProbably because they wouldn't have been able to prove intent to murder? If the victim had actually been killed, "Polo" probably would have been charged under the felony murder rule.
- cobbzilla 7y agoWhat an idiot. If he had money, he should have just paid some lawyers. Trademark the phrase “Do It For State” then strong-arm control of the domain via an IP infringement claim.
- basseq 7y agoPer another article[1], Dayo (the owner of the domain name) also filed and received a trademark for "Do It For State". [1] https://onezero.medium.com/the-influencer-and-the-hit-man-6c3905efd3c3 https://onezero.medium.com/the-influencer-and-the-hit-man-6c...
- cobbzilla 7y agoIt’s sad but with enough money, a good legal team could almost certainly win it back. Most likely when the holder realized a modest payout was cheaper than their own legal fees to defend it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pootpucker 7y agoThis is why you should pay for WhoIsGuard.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- faissaloo 7y agoThe title of this article really doesn't at all explain the contents.
- dang 7y agoRelated article: https://onezero.medium.com/the-influencer-and-the-hit-man-6c3905efd3c3 https://onezero.medium.com/the-influencer-and-the-hit-man-6c... via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21751920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21751920