[Community-Discuss] Notice to all the legacy netblocks holders in AfriNIC

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

Elad Cohen is the Donald Trump of the Middle East.  He is a pathological
liar, a con man, and a thief.

Much evidence exists to support this viewpoint, and somewhat less than
all of that evidence has yet been seen by the public generally, and/or
by the AFRINIC community specifically.  (I am informed and believe
however that current AFRINIC management is already well and truly aware
of much of this additional evidence.  All of it shall quite certainly
be made public in due course.)

Even in lieu of that additional evidence, it should already be plain
and clear to all that Mr. Cohen has made, and continues to make, the
most outrageous and unbelievable claims, backed up by exactly -zero-
hard evidence whatsoever.  He claims to have *somehow* purchased
enormously vast gobs of valuable IPv4 legacy address space, from some
unidentified party, while stedfastly refusing to name the party in
question, or to produce a single shread of documentary evidence
supporting his utterly outlandish claims.

This is a game that we here in the U.S. are already quite familiar with.

Critics of Mr. Trump's almost unbroken stream of ludicrous and outlandish
claims, about his wealth, about the true source of his bank loans, and
about numerous other of his superfically ridiculous claims have been
begging Mr. Trump for over four long years now to produce his tax returns
for public inspection, just as all other Presidents and presidential
candidates have done here in the U.S. for that past 60+ years now.  To
date, those many requests have never been honored.  Rather, Mr. Trump
is always finding some new lame excuse for keeping his dirty little
secrets secret.  And those excuses change from day to day.

So it is also with our Mr. Cohen.  Ask him to produce even a single shred
of evidence to support his claims to rightfully own several millions of
dollars worth of legacy AFRINIC IPv4 address space and he evades, delays,
and gives excuses.  I suspect that at any moment Mr. Cohen may likewise
claim to be the rightful owner of the gold fillings in my own teeth while
likewise producing zero evidence to support that equally absurd claim.

Furthermore, Mr. Cohen evidentally isn't even man enough to post here a
copy of the legal complaint that he has allegedly filed against AFRINIC.
He posts here, trying to persuade the AFRINIC community that AFRINIC
management has done something wrong by simply taking back what he and
his cohorts have stolen, and yet at this moment he is simultaneously
pursuing a legal attack against AFRINIC, and thus also against the very
same community that he is trying to persuade.  It may be too obvious to
even need saying, but I'll say it anyway:  Mr. Cohen has a funny way of
trying to gain allies for his personal financially-motivated jihad.

What we *do* know about Mr. Cohen, and what there *is* hard documentary
evidence to prove, is that he provided to various parties a number of
clearly forged LOA documents as he was attempting to obtain routing
for various parts of his stolen empire.  The evidence is so clear and
compelling that Mr. Cohen hasn't even bothered to try to dispute it.

But then again, why would he?  Anyone who spends at least two minutes
looking at the documents in question can readily see the obvious, i.e.
that the signatures and the "official" stamps on those documents are
the results of a quick-and-dirty cut-and-paste job in PhotoShop.  As I
have previously noted elsewhere, these forgeries are so inept and silly
that no self-respecting forger would even try to use such documents, or
try to pass them off as genuine.

Mr. Cohen does not wish to talk about those blatantly forged documents.
Nor does Mr. Cohen wish to talk about the five abandoned legacy /16 blocks
in the APNIC region that I caught him red-handed squatting on last year,
i.e. the 168.198.0.0/16, 139.44.0.0/16, 143.136.0.0/16, 143.253.0.0/16,
and 146.51.0.0/16 blocks, the first of which being the rightful property
of none other than the Australian national government.  And of course,
Mr. Cohen does not which to talk about his pending lawsuit against AFRINIC,
nor does he wish to post here a copy of his legal filing in that case
so that members of this community could know, first-hand and precisely,
what he is even suing AFRINIC for.  (For all anyone here knows, Mr. Cohen
may be suing AFRINIC merely over some unfortunate dog bite incident.)

Just like our Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen is also long on retoric and grievances
and short on specifics and evidence.  At the drop of a hat, and at every
opportunity he bleats that he is the unfortunate and guiltless victim
of some unseen secret cabal, which apparently now includes AFRINIC,
all of whom are conspiring together to deter him from his mission of
gathering unearned wealth unto himself, presumably so that he can
ascend to his rightful place among the upper echelons of wealthy society
in Israel.  And as with our Mr. Trump, it is apparetly of no concern
whatsoever to Mr. Cohen who he has to step on or who he has to steal
from in order to pursue his hoped-for riches.

I need to be clear about this.  Mr. Cohen appears to bemoan the fact
that AFRINIC has, at least in some instances, taken back control of
-just- the WHOIS records and also, hopefully, the reverse DNS
delegations for at least some of what Mr. Cohen and his various
partners in crime have stolen.  From where I am sitting, AFRINIC has
not done this either thoughtlessly nor even terribly expeditiously.
Quite the opposite in fact.

I continue to be dismayed and disheartened at the glacially slow pace at
which AFRINIC management has elected to remediate these self-evidently
bogus and clearly fradulent entries in the data base.  The unfortunate
and utterly unnecessary delays that AFRINIC management has applied to
what should have been some quite simple and straightforward data base
corrections have allowed Mr. Cohen and his cohorts more than a full
additional year of ill-gotten gains, earned on the backs of these stolen
blocks, and as an additional reward for deceit and theft.  (He is still
profitably sub-leasing a great deal of IPv4 space in these stolen blocks
to various parties, even as we speak, specifically with the aid and
assistance of the Hong Hong based AS18013 and its freshly-minted made-
to-order cousin, AS137951.)

It has been entirely apparent for more than a year now that AFRINIC
management and the AFRINIC board are all far more concerned with
protecting their own asses, legally speaking, than they are in thwarting
this ongoing criminal profittering or in simply doing the obviously
Right Thing.  The provably fradulent changes made to to the AFRINIC
WHOIS data base could have been and should have been un-done the moment
they first became known.  Instead, management and the board have elected
to take the path of least resistance, and to insist on their right and
(alleged) obligation to do absolutely nothing unless and until the
various and several legal representatives of the numerous long-dead
companies that are the rightful owners of these legacy blocks show up
on AFRINIC's doorstep to complain about these many and obviously
related thefts.

It is not necessary and should not be necessary for dead companies to
rise from the graveyard of corporations to haunt the living into simply
seeing what is obvious, plain, and right in front of their faces.  Nor
should it be necessary for corporate zombies to rise from the dead to
motivate the living to respond to blatant thefts intelligently and
promptly.

AFRINIC should at long last complete its work on these matters, un-do
the remaining frauds in the data base, and stop rewarding this ongoing
criminal enterprise. The fact that it has so far failed to do so, even
after more than a year of dawdling, will no doubt be a comfort and an
inspiration to the next wave of crooks, con men, and charlatans who
will in future see some hole, some new ploy, or some fresh opportunity
to also and likewise defraud the slow-acting and slow-witted AFRINIC.


Regards,
rfg


Ref:
https://bgp.he.net/AS137951#_prefixes

You may be forgiven for being perplexed at why an allegedly Hong Kong
based ASN is routing all and only IPv4 address blocks that all have little
South African national flags next to them in the above display.  More
significantly, you may also wonder why a great many of these blocks
have little green check marks next to them, indicating an "authorized"
route.  The reason for this, in at least some cases, is that not only
has AFRINIC management utterly failed to un-do the fradulent WHOIS data
base entries that were already known about and publicly reported on LAST
YEAR, but also and even worse, AFRINIC management has failed to prevent
Mr. Cohen from -continuing- to make fresh fradulent entries in the AFRINIC
data base, even into the current calendar year, for example, this one:

route:          155.159.0.0/16
descr:          Route-object
origin:         AS18013
mnt-by:         MNT-SCS
changed:        info at afri.holdings 20200126
source:         AFRINIC

I look forward to the day, if ever, when AFRINIC will decide to stop
allowing itself to be used by Mr. Cohen like a woman of the streets.

To say that this lack of care is shameful would be an understatement.