Online porn vendor brought to trial
September 8, 2003 at 8:25 PM ET
James
Wizard News (via 1010 WINS)
John Zucarrini recently was brought to court
for several criminal online offenses, the most glaring of which was his registration of more than 10,000 look-alike website addresses to direct unwary users (mainly children) to hardcore pornographic sites. One site mentioned in in the more than 100 lawsuits leveled against him? - "www.harrypottor.com"
The erroneous spelling of "HarryPottor.com" is not my fault, of course - this was one website Zucarrini registered to lure visitors to unwanted porn.
Zuccarini, 53, was arrested Wednesday after his e-mail was tracked to a telephone at an oceanfront hotel in Hollywood, Fla., where he had been living for 10 months. He is being held without bail after waiving his right to a hearing but can raise the issue again in New York.
He allegedly registered thousands of Internet domain names and was earning up to $1 million a year, mainly from pay-per-hit deals, according to federal prosecutors in New York.
Computer users who transposed letters or misspelled a site address could end up seeing pornography instead of Web sites for Disneyland, Teletubbies, Bob the Builder, Britney Spears, Scooby-Doo, Dragonball Z and others.
At a court hearing more than three years ago, he admitted registering more than 3,000 Internet domain names. One was harrypottor.com. Others played on the Digimon and Playstation names.