Telephone company Verizon has recently won the day in court against cybersquatter OnlineNIC. The former had sued the latter in July this year for registering huge numbers of websites (literally hundreds) using the Verizon name and trademarks. Thus, shady sites like these were born: 123verizonphones.com, verizononline.com, accountverizonwireless.com or myverizonwireless.com. Needless to say, the money made from promotional links or pop-ups hosted on these locations went to OnlineNIC.

So, this very week, a North California federal court decided that it was time for OnlineNIC to pay dearly for its evil deeds: $50,000 for each and every one of the fake 633 domains making illegal use of Verizon's coat of arms. It all amounts to $33,15 million, a fact which made Verizon refer to this judicial duel as “the largest cybersquatting judgment ever”, according to the Register.

Unfortunately, nobody really knows for sure who will actually pay all this money. OnlineNIC seems not to be your average dastardly domain aggregator – these guys covered their tracks pretty well. Even Verizon has no clue about the archvillains' secret identities, because they were hidden under numerous strata of non-existent companies, personal names for ICANN registration or shell entities.

San Francisco would be the HQ of OnlineNIC, if one were to believe the claims of the ghostly company. Not even the court summons could be sent, because Verizon didn't find any valid email address.

Also, this so-called OnlineNIC gets rid of infringing domains after five days and registers them again; this way, it manages to avoid registration payments, or being found-out by the lawful owners  of the brands they use. Because Verizon is not the only ones to be leeched by OnlineNIC, Yahoo and Microsoft are also involved in lawsuits against the company.