Sheesh.

I’ve been dealing with one or more persistent fake-me’s recently, setting up Facebook accounts with my name, photographs, etc., and then soliciting friends, offering prayer, and then requesting “love gifts.” On top of that (not sure if these are related), I recently received this:

(Letter to the President or Brand Owner, thanks)
Dear President,
We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China. I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on January 30, 2013 that a company which self-styled “??? Global Limited” were applying to register “brianmclaren” as their Brand Name and some domain names through our firm.
Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for “??? Global Limited”.Looking forward to your prompt reply.
Best Regards,

Suspecting this was another scam intended to make some fast cash, I then asked them how much it would cost for me to have them register these names for me rather than “Global Limited” – and here’s their reply:

Dear Brian McLaren,
Thanks for your reply. Following is the procedure, you can do as follows,
1. We will send the dispute application form to you.
2. Please fill out the form and return it via email or fax.
3. We will dispute these domains for your company, In the meantime, we will send the Invoice signed & stamped to you.
4. Please remit the payment to us according to the bank information on the Invoice and send the payment proof to us.
5. We will register the domain names for you within 2 workdays after receiving the remittance.
6. You will be awarded the certificates of Brand Name after 5 workdays.
Following is price list, for your reference：
brianmclaren.asia 35USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.cn 65USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.hk 65USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.in 35USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.tw 65USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.co.in 35USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.com.cn 65USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.net.cn 65USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.org.cn 65USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.com.hk 65USD/Per Year
brianmclaren.com.tw 65USD/Per Year
Brand Name:
brianmclaren 200USD/Per Year
Time is limited! If you decide to register those domain names, please let us know in order to transfer the Application Form to you. Any question, please contact us in time. Thanks for your cooperation.
Best Regards,

Who knows how many of these sites will emerge in the coming months pretending to be mine? For the record, I have one website, one Facebook page, and one Twitter account, and I’ll let you know if that changes – here at www.brianmclaren.net/