Bankrupt Environmental Careers Organization to Auction Domain Name

Gary Cruickshank, the bankruptcy trustee for defunct non-profit, The Environmental Careers Organization, plans to auction the company's "Eco.org" domain name in May. The company, which filed bankruptcy in July 2007, owes $1.2 million to the Environmental Protection Agency and $600,000 to other creditors. The trustee hopes the domain name sale will help pay back some of this debt.

The bankruptcy trustee for the defunct non-profit, The Environmental Careers Organization, Inc., hopes to generate money to pay creditors through a May auction of the company's domain name "Eco.org."

Founded in 1972, The Environmental Careers Organization dedicated itself to helping students develop careers in the environmental field. ECO matched students and recent graduates with government grants and placed them in paid environmental internships. During its 35 year history, ECO helped thousands of young people find jobs helping the environment. But, following a dispute with the Environmental Protection Agency over the use of grant money, and an investigation by the U.S. Attorney in Boston, ECO had to close its doors.

ECO filed a chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts on July 6, 2007. The Office of the U.S. Trustee appointed chapter 7 trustee Gary W. Cruickshank to liquidate its assets. According to papers filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the company owed about 1.8 million dollars to creditors, including more than 1.2 million dollars claimed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now, its bankruptcy trustee plans to auction the company's domain name "Eco.org" using the on-line domain name auction site GreatDomains.com. "It's unfortunate," said Mr. Cruickshank, "but once the company files its bankruptcy petition with the court, my job is to sell the assets quickly while trying to get the best price for creditors. Hopefully, we will get a good price and someone else will make good use of the name."

Great Domains runs a monthly on-line auction of prime domain names. The law firm the bankruptcy trustee hired to manage the sale, Swiggart & Agin, LLC, recently filed papers with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Boston to obtain permission for the sale. According to the court papers, the on-line auction is expected to start on May 22, 2008, and will run for one week. Great Domains' auctions regularly obtain five figure sales prices for high-quality domain names, and some names fetch seven figure bids.

But, nobody really knows how much this sale will generate for creditors. "We think the domain name is worth $100,000 to $200,000," said Warren E. Agin, head of Swiggart & Agin, LLC's bankruptcy department, "but we really don't know what the domain name will sell for at auction." The company's bankruptcy papers listed the value of the domain name as "unknown."

According to Marc Barreca, co-chair of the Bankruptcy & Insolvency Practice Group at the law firm of K & L Gates in Seattle, "tech savvy bankruptcy trustees increasingly use on-line auctions to sell assets with the goal of maximizing the recovery for creditors."

But, as Mr. Barreca explains, buyers can find great deals through bankruptcy auctions. "Bankruptcy trustees are under a lot of pressure to liquidate a company's assets quickly . This provides an opportunity for knowledgeable buyers to pick up bargains as trustees often have to take what they can get from a quick liquidation."

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