From what we've heard from our users, they're creating fake craigslist listings, and when people contact them, they're directing them to links on their site, claiming to be "Auto Tempest". Then they solicit payments (presumably reservations or down payments, if not complete sight-unseen purchases), while using our name recognition to gain trust.

We've determined that their registrar is Namecheap (as is ours, coincidentally), and they are hosted by a company called Quasinetworks, NL. Interestingly, if you google that company, the first result is someone complaining about how they were unresponsive to abuse notifications; not a great sign. We did sent a message to their abuse contact, but haven't heard back. We also contacted Namecheap and did get a reply, but it appears they will only take down a domain with a) a court order, b) potentially a request from law enforcement, or c) a UDRP proceeding: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en

The problem with options c or especially a is that they're costly, and nothing would stop whoever is behind the site from simply registering a new confusingly similar domain. So, to start with we've submitted a report to ic3.gov, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. Hopefully if they confirm the site is fraudulent, they can request that Namecheap yank the domain. I've never submitted such a complaint before though, so I have no idea how responsive they are.

Is there anything else we could do to shut these scammers down?