OKC Limo Company's Domain Name Snatched Up By Company In France

Dana Hertneky, News 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- While you may have heard of identity theft before but what about someone stealing your domain name? An Oklahoma City businessman said it happened to him.

Longtime Oklahoma City businessman Jimmy Paris said when you log onto his former business site ParisLimos.com, you get a site for a company in Paris, France.

On January 8 the website went to his company in Oklahoma. On January 9, the website suddenly showed a company based in Paris, France. 

"We get a call from a customer saying we're trying to locate ParisLimos.com and they're sending us to Paris, France," recalled owner Jimmy Paris.

And that's when Paris realized someone had seemingly hijacked his website.

"It was like overwhelming shock," said Paris. "We were like 'How in the world could anyone have taken over our Internet sight just like that?'"

And that is what Paris and his attorney's are trying figure out.

Last summer web records have Wave Media Technologies, an Edmond company as the registrant, or owner of the domain name. The owner of Wave Media said he hosts Paris' site but never had control over the domain name. In fact, he said he doesn't know who owns the name, he just took over Paris's account from RedDirt.com when they went out of business.

In July, the registrant of parislimos.com switched to an Arizona company named Domains by Proxy. Paris suspects someone sold his site out from under him.

However, when News 9 e-mailed the address on the new ParisLimos.com, the response was "I'm sorry but our companie don't know anything about ParisLimo.com."

In the meantime, Paris said this whole situation has put his business in park.

"A lot of people wonder if we went out of business, what in the world happened," said Paris. "It's a scary event, for your family, for your business, for all the people associated with you. It hurts."

Paris' attorney said they are working to resolve this issue. For now you can find the information about Paris' business at ParisLimos.net.

And the big lesson is Paris never actually owned his domain name.  

Web experts say you should always keep that domain name registered to you, not your web host.