This week, hours after Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in the 2024 election, the website domain “HarrisWalz.com” sold for $15,000. It was a tidy profit for domain owner Jeremy Greene Eche, who bought it for around $9 in 2020.
Eche is what is known as a “domain squatter,” someone who buys up low-cost web addresses with the intention of flipping them for a profit. The New York City trademark lawyer purchased several domains around the time of the 2020 election, he told ABC Audio, specifically focusing on candidates who were likely to run in the future.
“So I just looked up every heartland governor and senator I could think of,” he said. “I got a bunch of midwestern politicians."
In addition to the Harris/Walz domain, Eche also bought addresses that paired Harris’ name with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman. He tried to buy HarrisShapiro.com as well, he noted, in anticipation of Harris picking Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, but it had already been registered and purchased.
“You just have to hope you hit the jackpot when you start buying those names,” he said.
In total, Eche owned more than a dozen domains related to the 2024 election cycle, each of which needed to be renewed yearly for a small fee.
Eche was also the owner of ClintonKaine.com in the runup to the 2016 election, in which Hillary Clinton ran alongside Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. Once Clinton announced Kaine as her running mate, Eche sold the address for $15,000.
The buyer was Brad Parscale, senior adviser for data and digital operations for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign, who used the address to spread negative messaging about the Democratic ticket, Wired reported in 2016. At the time, Parscale told the tech magazine the site was the Trump campaign's answer to what they said was the liberal mainstream media.
"It allows us a nice playing field to do some opposition research and let it show," Parscale told Wired. "We want people to see all the truth, and not the sometimes one-sided truth that we get from the media."
At the time of the sale, Eche wasn't aware of the buyer’s identity, he said.
It wasn’t the first time a political domain name was used against a candidate. Visiting TedCruz.com in the run up to the 2016 Republican presidential primary didn't bring users to the campaign website for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Instead, the website, which was owned by an Arizona lawyer also named Ted Cruz, was used to promote the Republican's potential Democratic political rival, then-President Obama. The campaign ended up using TedCruz.org, Politico reported.
The buyer of HarrisWalz.com wanted to remain anonymous, according to Eche. He acknowledged that he's already sitting on domains looking ahead to future elections.
“I have a lot of Tim Walz domains because, like Harris was four years ago, Tim Walz now is an obvious candidate for eight years from now for the presidency.”
However, Eche admited that typing in a specific web address isn’t as common as it once was.
“Nobody just types in ‘HarrisWalz.com,’” Eche said. “They Google it.”
Hear more on "Start Here" from ABC Audio: