Folks, This information has been forwarded to ICANN contract compliance. On December 23, 2008 the National Boards of Pharmacy issued a letter to eNom(care of Sarah Akhtar Cooper) expressing concern over their continued sponsorship of illegal online pharmacies. A copy of the letter may be found at http://www.legitscript.com/download/NABP-Letter-to-eNom.pdf. Subsequently, it was confirmed with the Pharmacy Boards of Manitoba, Minnesota, Ontario, Quebec, and Texas that the “pharmacy licenses” posted by the eNom-sponsored domains were forgeries. It is important to understand that local pharmacy boards are the primary regulatory bodies in this area. Notices of the forgeries were also sent to eNom. Most troubling, investigators were able to purchase drugs from an eNom-sponsored domain without a prescription. The drugs were shipped into the United States from India, which is illegal. The site in question is canadianhealthcaremall[dot]net and presents additional problems. Canadianhealthcaremall[dot]net uses a WHOIS privacy protection service. This practice was recently called “material falsification” by a 9th Circuit Court Judge in the decision of US v. Kilbride (http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/10/28/07-10528.pdf). Regardless of your views on WHOIS, it is clear this is being used to mask criminal activity. eNom received a request to terminate canadianhealthcaremall[dot]net and 3000 other unlicensed pharmacy domains on December 1, 2009. The full report, along with all relevant letters from pharmacy regulators, were made public last week. However, as of this writing, eNom has not responded or complied with the requests.

From my perspective it would appear that eNom is in grave violation of Registrar Accreditation Agreement Section 3.7.2: “Registrar shall abide by applicable laws and governmental regulations.” In this case the pharmacy boards are the appropriate government regulators.

I'll keep everyone updated. -Garth