In October 2001, the Federal Trade Commission took action over Zuccarini's practice of registering internet domain names that were misspellings of famous brands or names – known as typosquatting. For example, he registered 41 variations on the name of Britney Spears so that fans misspelling her name in their browser would be taken to Zuccarini's sites.
The most likely candidates to misspell addresses are, inevitably, children. Zuccarini had at one stage over 5,500 domain names registered, including, teltubbies and bobthebiulder.
Once in a Zuccarini site, users were bombarded with a flurry of pop-up windows displaying ads for goods and services ranging from internet gambling to porn. In some cases, the legitimate web site the consumer was attempting to access also was launched, so consumers thought the hailstorm of ads to which they were being exposed was from a legitimate web site.
And a Zuccarini site is very difficult to leave. In a practice known as mousetrapping, programming code at the sites obstructed surfers' ability to close their browser or to go back to the previous page. Clicks on the 'close' or 'back' buttons caused new windows to open, and more ads to appear – in the hope that the user will click on one and transfer to the advertised site.
Zuccarini, according to the complaint, was paid a referral fee of between 10 to 25 cents whenever a user moved on from his site to one of the sites advertised. The scheme earned him up to $1 million a year, and a huge number of complaints and civil court actions.
These culminated in May 2002 when a US District Court permanently barred Zuccarini from diverting or obstructing consumers on the internet and from launching web sites or web pages that belong to unrelated third parties. The court also barred him from participating in advertising affiliate programmes on the internet, and ordered him to pay almost $1.9 million in damages.
But Zuccarini did not comply with the order and in September 2003 was charged under the new Truth in Domain Names statute.
This makes it a crime in the US to use "a misleading domain name on the internet to deceive a minor into viewing material that is harmful to minors on the internet." It carries a maximum sentence of four years.
In December Zuccarini pled guilty to 49 charges under the domain names law and on Thursday was sentenced to 30 months in prison.