In April 2002, the FTC obtained a judgment and permanent injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennyslvania barring cybersquatter John Zuccarini from continuing an extensive cyberscam. It involved diverting individuals from their intended website destinations to the more than 5,300 sites he owned, through the use of commonly occuring misspellings of domain names. Users were then trapped on his sites and subject to viewing ads that often contained pornography.
In a follow-up to this decision, Ben Edelman has authored a research report, Large-Scale Registration of Domains with Typographical Errors, establishing that most of the domains remain operational despite the FTC’s injuction.