“Throughout that conversation, Golestan maintained his innocence, even as he explained that the creation of the phony companies was necessary to prevent entities like Spamhaus from interfering with his business going forward.”
Amir Golestan used shell companies and notarized affidavits for people who didn’t exist to pull more than 735,000 IPv4 addresses out of ARIN. Prosecutors valued them at $10 million to $14 million. After Spamhaus blocked his ranges, Micfo sold to VPN providers, and he claimed about 40 percent of the big VPNs’ addresses came through him. Restitution came to nearly $77,000. Those VPN customers paid to hide behind a fraud.