I recently had the opportunity to interview Jeff Kupietzky, CEO of Oversee.net and wanted to share a portion of that interview. Below are five questions that to this point have not been answered about the SnapNames auction fraud. Tomorrow I will post the full interview with ten additional questions.

Q. When did Oversee learn about bidding by an employee?
A. October 2009

Q. How did Oversee learn that an employee had been bidding?
A. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve internal controls, our finance group noticed un-authorized refunds which led to an internal inquiry and then an external inquiry that surfaced the issues.

Q. Did anyone ever investigate bidder “halvarez” after so many complaints over the years?
A. Yes.  Unfortunately, the person responsible for investigating was the employee who was perpetrating the fraud and skillfully concealed his conduct.

Q. Did Oversee executives ever try to speak to or meet with “halvarez” who accounted for a % of SnapNames revenue?
A. Yes, but as mentioned above, management unfortunately relied on the representations of the employee.  In hindsight, that obviously was a mistake.  As you know, in our industry there are many individuals who place great value on their privacy.  As such, it was not unusual to have a large bidder who didn’t want to meet.

Q. What measures are in place to ensure insider bidding doesn’t happen again?
A. Apart from continuing to rely on the advice of experts who we are consulting on best practices here, which remains on ongoing process, the company has implemented closer monitoring of bidding activity for suspect behavior; more specific and restrictive domain name ownership policies for employees; and enhanced controls over financial transactions.