| Founded | 2008 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Dan Keen |
| Headquarters | |
| Services | Registered agent |
| Owner | Dan Keen |
| Subsidiaries | Epik |
| Website | www |
Registered Agents Inc. (RAI) is a United States-based registered agent company founded by Dan Keen in 2008. Since 2023, RAI has been the owner of Epik, a domain name registrar and web hosting service known for providing services to alt-tech websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist materials. [1] [2]
In 2008, Dan Keen founded RAI after running a tree trimming and landscaping business in Idaho. [3] Initially focusing on company incorporation in the Pacific Northwest, [4] Dan Keen grew RAI into a registered agent incorporating companies throughout the United States. [3] According to Wired , RAI is a "one-stop shop for people seeking to incorporate a business in any US state, often in those with advantageous tax policies, while obscuring their identities." [3] RAI uses fictitious personas to mask the identities of its employees and to sign their customers' incorporation documents, according to Wired. [3] In Wyoming alone, RAI serves as the registered agent for over 50,000 companies. [5]
In 2020, The Sheridan Press investigated RAI as the registered agent of companies with no presence in Wyoming that had received CARES Act money. [4] [6] In 2022, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that RAI served as the registered agent to companies alleged to launder COVID-19 funds. [7] The same year, KELO-TV reported that RAI served as the registered agent for a company operating illegal robocalls targeted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). [8] In 2023, Reuters reported that RAI served as the registered agent for Russian and Somali cybercrime groups. [9] In January 2024, RAI was reported to serve as the registered agent for a vital records intermediary company later shut down by the Wyoming authorities for misrepresentation. [10] In March 2024, the Orlando Sentinel reported that RAI was linked to an election disinformation campaign in Florida. [11] In May 2024, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray dissolved three companies registered by RAI that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found to be linked to fraud directed by North Korea. [12] [13]
In June 2023, RAI acquired Epik, a domain name registrar and web hosting service catering to far-right and neo-Nazi websites that have been denied service by other internet service providers. [1] [14] [15] [2]
RAI also owns a software development company called Two Barrels LLC and a company that helps manage multiple corporation filings called Corporate Tools LLC. [3]
.eu is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the European Union (EU). Launched on 7 December 2005, the domain is available for any person, company or organization based in the European Union. This was extended to the European Economic Area in 2014, after the regulation was incorporated into the EEA Agreement, and hence is also available for any person, company or organization based in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The TLD is administered by EURid, a consortium originally consisting of the national ccTLD registry operators of Belgium, Sweden, and Italy, joined later by the national registry operator of the Czech Republic. Trademark owners were able to submit registrations through a sunrise period, in an effort to prevent cybersquatting. Full registration started on 7 April 2006.
Domain hijacking or domain theft is the act of changing the registration of a domain name without the permission of its original registrant, or by abuse of privileges on domain hosting and registrar software systems.
Network Solutions, LLC, formerly Web.com is an American-based technology company and a subsidiary of Web.com, the 4th largest .com domain name registrar with over 6.7 million registrations as of August 2018. In addition to being a domain name registrar, Network Solutions provides web services such as web hosting, website design and online marketing, including search engine optimization and pay per click management.
Business.com is a digital media company and B2B web destination which offers various performance marketing advertising, including lead generation products on a pay per lead and pay per click basis, directory listings, and display advertising. The site covers business industry news and trends for growth companies and the B2B community to stay up-to-date, and hosted more than 15,000 pieces of content as of November 2014. Business.com operates as a subsidiary of the Purch Group since being acquired in 2016.
A robocall is a phone call that uses a computerized autodialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot. Robocalls are often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns, but can also be used for public service, emergency announcements, or scammers. Multiple businesses and telemarketing companies use auto-dialing software to deliver prerecorded messages to millions of users. Some robocalls use personalized audio messages to simulate an actual personal phone call. The service is also viewed as prone to association with scams.
Web.com is an American dot-com company that provides a website builder, along with website hosting, domain name registration, web development, and various digital marketing services. It serves as a partner for very small to small-sized businesses and entrepreneurs, assisting them in establishing and expanding their online presence.
Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, a sting site, a cousin domain, or a fake URL, is a form of cybersquatting, and possibly brandjacking which relies on mistakes such as typos made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. A user accidentally entering an incorrect website address may be led to any URL, including an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter.
Myhomepage.com was founded in 2009 becoming a patented personalised homepage service with synchronised bookmarking and password manager software.
Top Level Design is a company in the United States, and the domain name registry for the generic top-level domains .wiki, .ink, and .gay. Ray King serves as its chief executive officer.
.club, often stylized as .CLUB and sometimes dot-club, is a top-level domain (TLD). It was proposed in ICANN's new generic top-level domain (gTLD) program, and became available to the general public on May 7, 2014. .Club Domains, LLC is the domain name registry for the string.
Donuts Inc. was a domain name registrar and registry providing paid domain names under 270 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), as made possible by ICANN's gTLD expansion program, as well as 173 other TLDs including .au (ccTLD) and .org, through its own registry status and contracts between its subsidiaries and other registries.
Uniregistry is a large retail domain name registrar and web services provider; as well as a domain name registry that administers generic top-level domains. In February 2013, the related company Uniregistrar Corporation became an ICANN-accredited registrar and launched under the licensed Uniregistry brand name in 2014. Uniregistry's acquisition by GoDaddy was announced in February 2020.
Wind River is a 2017 neo-Western crime film written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. It is the third film by Sheridan on the modern American West. The film stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tracker and an FBI agent, respectively, who try to solve a murder on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Gil Birmingham, Jon Bernthal, and Graham Greene also star.
Epik is an American domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing services to alt-tech websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist materials. It has been described as a "safehaven for the extreme right" because of its willingness to provide services to far-right websites that have been denied service by other Internet service providers.
Robert W. Monster is a Dutch-American technology executive and the founder, former chief executive officer, and current chairman of Epik, a domain registrar and web host known for providing services to websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and extremist content.
Domain.com is a domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, and is a subsidiary of Newfold Digital.
.guru is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) owned by Donuts. It was delegated on 6 November 2013.
.sexy is a generic top-level domain owned by Uniregistry. Delegated on 14 November 2013, .sexy was the subject of controversy due to opposition from the government of Saudi Arabia and privacy concerns regarding registering domains.
The Epik data breach occurred in September and October 2021, targeting the American domain registrar and web hosting company Epik. The breach exposed a wide range of information including personal information of customers, domain history and purchase records, credit card information, internal company emails, and records from the company's WHOIS privacy service. More than 15 million unique email addresses were exposed, belonging to customers and to non-customers whose information had been scraped. The attackers responsible for the breach identified themselves as members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous. The attackers released an initial 180 gigabyte dataset on September 13, 2021, though the data appeared to have been exfiltrated in late February of the same year. A second release, this time containing bootable disk images, was made on September 29. A third release on October 4 reportedly contained more bootable disk images and documents belonging to the Texas Republican Party, a customer of Epik's.
.monster is a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) owned by XYZ.com. Originally delegated in 2014 by the employment website Monster.com as a brand-specific domain name, .monster was acquired by XYZ in 2019 as a general domain.
The company routinely incorporates thousands of businesses on behalf of its customers using fake personas. Former Registered Agents Inc. employees say that the company's widespread use of personas is an outgrowth of its founder's obsession with privacy and a desire to push the boundaries of incorporation laws.
A local newspaper, the Sheridan Press, began investigating the North Gould Street operation in 2020. It found that consumers could not reach anyone at the building. As the newspaper prepared to publish another story late last year, a lawyer for Registered Agents Inc. threatened to sue.
Until last month, the company listed "Bill Havre" as board president and executive director...ICIJ and The Post searched public records in Wyoming and across the United States, including voter registration and property records, and found no one listed by that name.
