The CEO of a South Carolina technology firm has pleaded guilty to 20 counts of wire fraud in connection with an elaborate network of phony companies set up to obtain more than 735,000 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from the nonprofit organization that leases the digital real estate to entities in North America.
In 2018, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), which oversees IP addresses assigned to entities in the U.S., Canada, and parts of the Caribbean, notified Charleston, S.C. based Micfo LLC that it intended to revoke 735,000 addresses.
ARIN said they wanted the addresses back because the company and its owner — 38-year-old Amir Golestan — had obtained them under false pretenses. A global shortage of IPv4 addresses has massively driven up the price of these resources over the years: At the time of this dispute, a single IP address could fetch between $15 and $25 on the open market.
Micfo responded by suing ARIN to try to stop the IP address seizure. Ultimately, ARIN and Micfo settled the dispute in arbitration, with Micfo returning most of the addresses that it hadn’t already sold.
But the legal tussle caught the attention of South Carolina U.S. Attorney Sherri Lydon, who in May 2019 filed criminal wire fraud charges against Golestan, alleging he’d orchestrated a network of shell companies and fake identities to prevent ARIN from knowing the addresses were all going to the same buyer.
Each of those shell companies involved the production of notarized affidavits in the names of people who didn’t exist. As a result, Lydon was able to charge Golestan with 20 co ..
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