ToolsSource: HousingWire
79 forgotten domains let scammers spoof a top Nashville team's email
Original headline: “Criminals used 79 dormant domains to impersonate a top real estate team” — HousingWire, Oct 12, 2026
HousingWire reports that Gary Ashton, founder of The Ashton Real Estate Group at REMAX Advantage in Nashville, had accumulated roughly 400 domains, and email-deliverability consultant Alex Shakhov of SH Consulting found unauthorized email activity on 79 of the dormant ones; the messages failed authentication checks and came from IP addresses in several countries, including China and Russia. After email authentication protections were set up on the affected domains, reported unauthorized messages fell from 235 in the five weeks before enforcement to 43 in the five weeks after, and the remaining ones were rejected rather than delivered. Shakhov says roughly 35% to 40% of the about 900 teams his firm monitors are being spoofed, and the article notes that unauthorized traffic can also hurt a domain's reputation, pushing real listing alerts and client emails toward spam.
Our take (opinion & analysis, not reporting)
For agents and teams: make a list of every domain you've ever registered, including old campaign, neighborhood and expansion names, and have whoever manages your DNS set up email authentication so the ones that should never send mail can't be used to impersonate you. Run the same check on the domain your CRM uses for drip campaigns and listing alerts, since spoofing can drag down delivery of your real messages too. None of this replaces the basics the article lists: unique passwords, multifactor authentication and never sending wiring details by email.
Online discussion: no notable public discussion found yet (checked Oct 13, 2026).