Ebola.com Domain Name Sold for Over $200k

A week ago, many mainstream news articles were quite critical of Blue String Ventures and its owners for trying to sell the Ebola.com domain name.  According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, a company called Weed Growth Fund, Inc. (formerly Ovation Research, Inc.) has acquired the Ebola.com domain name “for $50,000 cash and 19,192 shares of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. common stock owned by the Company.”

Cannabis Sativa, Inc. trades under the CBDS ticker symbol, and at the time of publication, it currently trades at $8.50/share. Based on the price of $8.50/share, the total value of the stock right now is $163,132, making this deal valued at over $200,000. According to the sale agreement  also filed with the SEC, the seller needs to hold on to the shares of CBDS stock for a minimum of 6 months per SEC rules.

Assuming a deal for the domain name is worth over  $200,000, that is an exceptional  ROI for Blue String Ventures as the company reportedly bought Ebola.com for $13,500.

The company’s owners were beaten up quite a bit by some members of the media for owning and selling this domain name, and I am sure a large deal like this helps to make that more palatable. I am curious if the publications that wrote negative stories about Ebola.com will update them to reflect the sale and serve as validation for the seller’s valuation.

According to Blue String Ventures founder Jon Schultz, the buyer contacted the company about acquiring Ebola.com shortly after the CNBC article was published. This article was one of the few that did not seem to pass judgment on the company for owning and selling Ebola.com.

You might be curious why  a company like  Cannabis Sativa, Inc. would have an interest in the Ebola.com domain name. Although Schultz told me that he doesn’t know the buyer’s plans for the domain name, he led me to an article on Marijuana.com where the CEO of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. discusses ebola and marijuana.

Thanks to George Kirikos for uncovering  the details of the sale.

Addendum: Since many of the other articles were particularly critical of the photo Schultz provided to the Washington Post, here’s another photo sans bathrobe.

Jon Schultz

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

27 COMMENTS

    • 6-months later and the stock is down 60%+ to $2.85 a share today.

      http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CBDS

      Hope he was able to dump it. Volume was unusually high (on the sell-side) the last few days so I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Schultz got out.

      Company is still bleeding money all over the place…

  1. Actually IMHO this “big deal” is less big than you think.
    The reason is quite easy to explain: Cannabis Sativa, Inc. is a thin-volumes OTC BB stock, whose shares are very easy to manipulate, since it’s very illiquid (check the charts).
    Furthermore, CBDS is a recently established loss-making company with an easy to replicate business model (at a quick glance I see little or no competitive advantages over other players in this now “highly populated” business) and virtually no revenues: they closed 2013 with a turnover of 1,000 USD and net losses for over 32 mln USD, 1H 2004 closed with sales for 1,672 USD and a loss of over 178,000 USD.
    As of 1H 2004, CBDS main assets are represented by goodwill for approx 13 mln USD, which was the results of a merger with a Nevada Corporation called Kush, and intangibles for over 3 mln USD (essentially coming from the Kush merger, plus the value attributed to the domain CBDS.com …).
    Tangible book value, as of 1H 2004, is negative.
    It’s a weird company coming out from a series of mergers and reorganizations, you can find more details here: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1360442/000144586614001059/cannabissativa10q08182014.htm
    As far as I see, these shares could be easily have no value … not more than a cloud of smoke … 😉 …
    One of the “funny” things is that “The Company’s previous operations were in operating a tanning salon business.” … be aware and try not to get burned … lol 😀

  2. Well, at least he got $50k out of it. Those shares will likely be a lot less in 6-months time. This OTC company basically has zero revenues and no cash on hand. Appears to be just another shell company riding this green rush and pumping out empty press releases to garner media attention.

  3. Fantastic sale for Mr. Burns and his company. Just a little stock movement and he could net half a million. Guy really needs to invest in some lights or get a real photographer. Still looks like he took it at an old Italian restaurant or a mortuary. 🙂

    • I really wonder if Mr. Burns even poked around this companies financials??

      Let’s see:

      $118M market cap at $8/share

      $813 annual revenue (Yes, that’s $813.00 total !!!

      Annual profit = Loss of $32 million

      His total share count is more than the daily volume – good luck dumping those shares in 6-months. Who are you going to sell them to??

      What could possibly go wrong!?

      And to all those saying “he sold it too cheap!” Really?? All that free media exposure in some of the most coveted TV and online publications and the BEST offer was $50k cash?!

  4. With all the controversy surrounding this domains, it is hard to know exactly what Jon Schultz was thinking, but in my opinion it seems like much too low a price to sell it for. The $200,000 figure is good, but the reality is that there is at least a 50/50 chance he will never be able to unload the stock for any significant price, either because dumping that much stock all at once will drive the price to zero, or in 6 months the stock will be at zero anyhow. So, the seller may end up with only $50,000 out of it, and that seems like a big risk to take.

    Maybe the seller needed cash, maybe he was under pressure to sell due to the negative publicity, maybe he thinks the stock has more potential than most other people do, I don’t know. The whole thing seems strange though.

    • Since the first time I knew about his story and all the negative press he received, I have been under the impression that he wanted to get rid of the domain ASAP. I’m sure he wouldn’t have behaved like this if he had owned a premium .com in a different category.

    • Eric,
      maybe their plans are different, and there is another “silent” agreement between the parties, and they will dump together the stocks in the middle of their “pumping” … pump-and-dump schemes work this way …
      So, as usual, the losers will be small investors buying overinflated junk stocks during the hype (the purchase of Ebola.com is part of the hype generation …) …
      Until SEC and FINRA will step in …

  5. From last Ovation 10-K “Management does not believe that the Company’s current cash of $1,516 is sufficient to cover the expenses they will incur during the next twelve months without steady revenue. The financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the uncertainty about our ability to continue in business. As such we may have to cease operations and you could lose your investment.”

    Ovation-Weed Growth Fund Change in Control: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1580297/000147793214005143/ovation_8k.htm

    Eric Miller, president & director of Weed Growth Fund, was already involved in something similar about another OTC company called Marijuana Inc: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Marijuana-Inc-PINKSHEETS-HEMP-iw-35105792.html
    Ms. Sadia Barrameda is and has since 2007 been the sole officer, director and stockholder of New Compendium Corporation, a Colorado corporation. Ms. Barrameda also is and has since 2010 been the owner and founder of Glamora by Sadia, a women’s high end boutique operated as a sole proprietorship. Citizenship: Philippines.

    What about New Compendium Corporation, which according to SEC filings is the new owner of Weed Growth Fund aka Ovation:
    A shell company with no corporate address? lol 😀
    http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=63616466

    As far as I see, it looks like these guys are con artists, whose only goal is to sell worthless stocks in exchange of valuable assets … starting, merging, reverse-merging, closing or recycling shell companies …
    Maybe I’d call it stock fraud: http://www.420magazine.com/2014/10/hemp-oil-hustlers/

    Pump and dump again … beware people!

  6. He was smart to dump it and take the cash. I am really surprised so many say that he sold it to cheap because as soon as they make a vaccine this domain becomes worthless or close to it. What would you do with it if there is no epidemic?

  7. Just to connect the dots:

    “Two former marijuana smugglers, Bruce Perlowin and Don Steinberg, founded Medical Marijuana Inc. in 2009. The company actually started as something called the Berkshire Collection, identified by the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) as one of 59 shell companies operating under the umbrella of a fraudulent telecom enterprise called Blackout Media. The mastermind of Blackout Media, Sandy Winick, went to prison for the rest of his life after a court found him guilty of swindling investors out of $140 million.
    In 2005, Perlowin and Steinberg issued a 1,000:1 “reverse split” on shares of Berkshire.
    After the reverse split, Berkshire became “My Newpedia,” which subsequently merged with a company called Club Vivanet.
    Its biggest shareholders were Steinberg, his wife, and a company owned by a woman with intimate ties to supposed nobility in the Dominion of Melchizedek, a fake island used to facilitate international banking fraud.
    The company was called New Compendium Corporation, owned by Sadia Barrameda, who holds the majority of New shares.” (Source: Project CBD, via 420 Magazine).

    Sadia Barrameda is sole officer, director and stockholder of New Compendium Corporation, which controls Weed Growth Fund Inc and Cannabis Sativa, Inc.

    I’d curious to know if they initially proposed Blue String Ventures to close an all-stock deal … 😀

  8. As far as I see, Eric Miller, CEO of Weed Growth Fund inc, was previously working as Institutional Sales at Scottsdale Capital, a company which has repeatedly been hit by the SEC and FINRA for regulatory violations, also involving penny stocks scams.
    A few examples:
    http://www.thestreet.com/story/12145216/1/the-deal-fbi-securities-officials-investigate-biozoom-trading-source-says.html
    http://www.rrbdlaw.com/enforcement-actions/index.php?cid=1&eid=1639&year=..
    http://sirf-online.org/2013/09/30/the-penny-stock-lawyer/

    Personally, I would never do any business with this kind of people …

  9. Not a good sale for this Ebola domain, unless the stock is sold at its current value. The former owner could have developed this domain long ago, and made a mint with hiring some clinical writers to write quality content. Medical websites provide valuable information to inform the public. In return, these websites make consistent revenue.

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