Mark Madsen Caught In A Web Of Cyber Intrigue

You may have seen the item on a man who hacked markmadsen.com in order to sell it to White Vanilla himself. But it's worth delving into it to debate just what is the most insane part of this story.

Daniel Goncalves of north Jersey hacked into the account of one of the owners of the domain name, and shifted ownership to himself. He then put the URL up on eBay, where it was purchased by Madsen himself for more than $100k.

Goncalves was arrested and charged with theft, identity theft, and computer theft — that's the theft triple crown if you're keeping score. But more interesting to me is that I can't identify which part of this whole charade is the most ludicrous:

1. Someone was apparently squatting on the markmasden.com URL before any of this?

2. Someone thought it was worth their while to hack markmadsen.com?

3. Someone thought it was a good idea to put markmadsen.com on eBay?

4. Mark Madsen was searching for himself on eBay?

5. Markmadsen.com is worth more than $100,000?

Goncalves has clearly never heard the phrase "may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb." In NBA domain names terms, it means if you're going to steal a website, there's about 300 players whose sites would be more valuable.

Union Township Man Charged With Web Name Theft, Sale On eBay [AP]

Official Site of Mad Dog Mark Madsen

Send an email to Barry Petchesky, the author of this post, at barryp@deadspin.com.

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