Digital Entrepreneur To Serve 14 Years For Criminal Plot To Wrest Domain Name

The Justice Department issued a press release

today stating that a social media entrepreneur has been sentenced to 14 years in federal prison for his ruthless plot to wrest control of a desired domain name.

The entrepreneur, 27-year-old Rossi Lorathio Adams II, was so desperate to own DoItForState.com for his R-rated media upstart State Snaps, that he enlisted his cousin to break into the home of owner and hold him at gunpoint until the transfer was initiated. State Snaps was founded by Adams — who goes by the online moniker ‘Polo’ — while he was a student at Iowa State University in 2015. At its peak, the brand — which traffics in user-generated images and videos of young people engaged in drunkenness, nudity, and other crude behavior — counted over a million followers across Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter, according to the DOJ.

Adams was found guilty by a jury in April of one count of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by force, threats, and violence. His cousin and co-conspirator, Sherman Hopkins, Jr. — who was already a convicted felon at the time of the 2017 break-in — was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year after pleading guilty to one count of interference with commerce by threats and violence, according to The Des Moines Register. In addition to his prison time, Adams was also sentenced to pay $9,000 in restitution, and roughly $26,000 in court and attorney fees.

Followers of State Snaps often repeated the site’s slogan, ‘Do It For State’ — explaining Adams’ seemingly unhinged desperation for the domain name. While the gunpoint break-in occurred in 2017, Adams’ harassment actually kicked off in 2015, and involved text messages with gun emojis, according to the Register.

For its part, the break-in incident resulted in a shootout. While Hopkins was holding the gun against the unnamed victim’s head and ordering him to initiate the domain transfer, the victim made a brazen attempt to gain control of the firearm, during which time he was shot in the leg. Once successfully gaining control, however, the victim shot Hopkins multiple times in the chest — injuries that Hopkins ultimately survived.

Despite all that, State Snaps remains active, and it appears as though the upstart has retained the DoIt4State.com domain name after all.