I've gotten a series of e-mails from Kim Dotcom these past few days. That's not as unusual as you might expect: despite being the defendant in an international criminal copyright case and founder of the infamous new file-sharing site Mega, Dotcom takes plenty of time to reach out to us press people.

But these latest e-mails weren't from the real Dotcom. As the larger-than-life businessman launched his new venture, someone impersonating Dotcom was trying to trick the press into writing about a supposed New Zealand government plan to shut Mega down.

The idea of a government taking over Mega's domain is plausible enough. After all, it happened to Megaupload one year ago, and the government of the African country Gabon pulled the plug on Mega's original domain ("Me.ga") before Dotcom shifted over to using Mega.co.nz.

Right after Gabon suspended Dotcom's use of the Me.ga domain name, a group calling itself "Omega" took that website over. As we reported in November, Omega claimed that Dotcom offered it 1 percent of his new company in exchange for the domain, but that it instead planned to sell to Dotcom's "enemies" for a purchase price of millions of dollars—or bitcoins.

This Omega group is back and still looking for money in exchange for a domain name, which they claim will go toward the legal defense of people like Bradley Manning, Jeremy Hammond, Barrett Brown, and Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer. They want $1 million for Mega.co, perhaps thinking either Dotcom or a rival might buy it from them.

But the impersonation part of this scheme seems more like a clumsy prank than a serious scamming operation.

The e-mails

The first e-mail I got from this imaginary version of "Kim Dotcom" came Saturday afternoon:

Hi Jon, I was told by a source in the NZ governement [sic] that they were seriously envisaging pulling the plug on Mega.co.nz. We don't want another Me.ga fiasco. Good news is we have a better and safer domain name which we will be revealing when the countdown is over and that's Mega.co. Please do not leak this information until the very end of the countdown, we are still shifting from Mega.co.nz to Mega.co. Kim

The e-mail came with a long legal disclaimer, amusingly claiming copyright over its contents:

PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS This email and all rights associated with it are the property of Kim Dotcom. It contains material for which legal professional privilege is claimed. The contents of this email may not be examined, removed or reproduced without my express written permission by Kim Dotcom. The information contained in this e-mail message and any accompanying files is or may be confidential. It is intended only for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, dissemination, reliance, forwarding, printing or copying of this e-mail or any attached files is unauthorised. This e-mail is subject to copyright. No part of it should be reproduced, adapted or communicated without the written consent of the copyright owner. If you have received this e-mail in error please advise the sender immediately by return e-mail or telephone and delete all copies. Kim Dotcom does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in this e-mail or attached files. Internet communications are not secure, therefore Kim Dotcom does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message or attached files.

The e-mail itself came from "twitter@kim.co," which happens to be one letter off Dotcom's real e-mail address of "twitter@kim.com." We don't know who sent this e-mail, but it was clear whoever did wanted us to navigate to Mega.co. There I found a webpage devoted to Omega, along with a message saying, "We will soon be auctionning [sic] Mega.co at Flippa.com to fund The Omega Project and the WWW.TF."

Www.tf describes itself as "a fund for those heroes of the Internet in the net of justice." The goal is apparently raising money for WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning, former Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown, alleged Stratfor hacker Jeremy Hammond, and convicted hacker Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer.

That e-mail from "Kim Dotcom" was likely a ploy to gain attention for this effort to sell off Mega.co. Omega's auction asks for a starting bid of $1 million. While there are zero bids thus far, Omega touts the attractiveness of the domain name, saying "Are you a 500 company, an advertising company, a lobby with a grief or a file hosting service with a terrible domain name? Mega.co is for you!"

Omega also talks up .co, a top-level Internet domain assigned to Colombia, noting that .co addresses are used by Twitter, Google, and Amazon for short URLs. Its owners are keen on the idea that Mega.co will catch a lot of traffic from people intending to go to Kim Dotcom's real Mega service. Their auction page claims that one of Dotcom's associates told them, "I think that mega.co is not such a bad idea at all, maybe not as the primary domain, but surely to catch type-in traffic that omits .nz."

Mega.co most recently changed owners in December 2012, but the ownership information is private.

Dotcom's Mega.co.nz went online without a hitch, at least without any visible government interference. Dotcom himself has expressed confidence that his new site is bulletproof. But the shadow effort to impersonate Dotcom and convince reporters that the new site was under attack continued. A Twitter account called @Megadotco representing the Mega.co website sprung up, which I followed yesterday, not initially realizing the connection between this Twitter account and the e-mail I received.

This morning, the account sent me an urgent direct message on Twitter: "Hi Jon, Kim wants to speak you regarding a certain delicate matter, [Jon's e-mail address] is your email right?"

I wrote back: "Yes it is," and soon got another message in my inbox from twitter@kim.co:

Hi Jon, So here's a thing: We fear that Mega.co.nz is going to be suspended thus very soon, it was confirmed by a source of ours in the NZ gov. To avoid another Me.ga fiasco we were planning on unveiling our new domain name Mega.co on the day of the launch — a shorter, better and safer choice, but the domain was hacked by none other than the same people who hacked into Me.ga. They redirected it to their website where they say they plan on selling the domain via Flippa.com. We need to stop these people and we believe you could help us. Kim

"How can I help?" I replied, playing along. "Tell the story!" the response came back.

The exchange with a Kim Dotcom impersonator was too strange not to write about, even if we are playing into their hands to some extent by telling the story. I wrote one final message this afternoon to "Kim," asking for information about the fundraising effort and why they decided to impersonate Dotcom in order to get the word out. I haven't heard back yet.

I also sent the real Dotcom messages via e-mail and Twitter. One of his colleagues replied that the messages were "not from Kim, I can assure you." I didn't hear from Kim himself—it turns out the real Dotcom is occasionally too busy to talk to reporters.