Less than a week ago, Michael Murphy — the owner of Jacksonville’s salvage company Eco Relics — was about to go to sleep when he had a “light bulb moment.”

He was lying in his bed, chatting with friends about the coronavirus pandemic and how a Floridian bought the web domain for reopenNC.com — a blank website with an address encouraging North Carolina to reopen.

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Murphy — who said he’s opposed to the country opening back up too soon, citing fear of “another bird flu” — said he didn’t want to see other states follow suit and start campaigns to prematurely re-open states. So he took things into his own hands.

As first exposed on a viral Reddit post and subsequently reported on by web-security blogger Brian Krebs and Mother Jones, Murphy bought dozens of web domains including reopenGA.com, reopenAL.com, reopenAK.com and more over the weekend.

“I thought, ‘we can use this for good,’” he told the Times-Union.

As noted by Krebs, reopen sites — including reopenPA.com — are tied to grassroots campaigns for quarantine protests and gridlocks. Others are connected to anti-gun control pages.

Murphy said the premise was to buy the domains before protesters or extremist groups had the chance to do so themselves. Ultimately, he planned to sell the domains to organizations or non-profits devoted to what he calls “real news.” He cited science advocacy groups, MoveOn and the ACLU as examples.

“I bought like 200 names all together,” he said. “I bought everything I could find. I had to go through every iteration I could think of. It took me quite a long time.”

Murphy said he bought domains linked to phrases including “reopen” and “liberate,” after “Trump opened his mouth about liberating.”

Domain history records show Murphy purchased the web domains last week, linking them back to his name, home phone number, home address and personal email.

That’s when he said things went awry.

“All of a sudden on Sunday, I was at home and the phone just started blowing up,” Murphy said. “My wife was freaking out. The cat was out of the bag.”

“You’re a scum sucker,” one caller said.

“You should be dead,” said another. “That was just the tip of the iceberg.”

Murphy pulled the landline entirely.

“It was just craziness,” he said. “When I bought all of these, I thought nothing of it. I didn’t hide my name. I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal. Plus, it costs an extra $10 per site to hide your name.”

But when hackers, doxxers and trolls came for Murphy — and his business — he ultimately shelled the extra money to wipe the domain listing information.

“[The Eco Relics] Facebook page was hacked into a different language,” he said. “All the liberals were attacking me, thinking I was against them. Conservative guys, I didn’t get one email from a conservative, which is disappointing, because what I was trying to do was exactly what [liberals] would want to do.”

Murphy said he spent “at least $4,000” on purchasing the domains and ultimately, scrubbing his ties to each.

Records still show the domains trace back to a recent Florida purchase, but no longer list Murphy’s name or specifics.

“It was probably a waste of money,” he said. “This is just a huge bill on my credit card.”

This wasn’t the first time Murphy has taken an extreme approach regarding the coronavirus.

Earlier this month, he offered to lease Eco Relic’s lumber drying machine to hospitals as a way to sterilize large numbers of N95 masks at once.

After three days “nonstop” on the phone trying to reach state officials and knowing the machine was too big for hospitals, Murphy gave up.

“That’s one of the reasons that prompted me [to buy the domains],” he said. “I realized how critical this was. When I saw people that want to reopen the country, it was killing me.”

Murphy said he wants the Jacksonville community to know he “was not trying to profit from this.”

“I was trying to do good. I’d really like to find an organization to take these over,” he said. “I did my job. I want somebody to do their job. Everybody thinks the worst. Everybody thinks everything’s a scam it’s just really disappointing.”

Still, naysayers question Murphy’s motives.

According to Krebs, sites like reopenPA.com and reopenMN.com are allegedly owned by Murphy. Both of those websites re-route to gun right advocacy groups calling to end quarantine. The websites’ ownership has since been scrubbed and the Times-Union was unable to verify original ownership.

When asked about this discrepancy, Murphy responded, “I don’t think I own those.”

He said he bought so many at once, he’s lost track of which sites are his anymore. He added a promise to sue anyone re-directing one of his domains to a gun rights site.

Following an interview with the Times-Union, Murphy provided a list of domains he purchased and screenshots from his GoDaddy dashboard, listing out the domains he owned. Neither reopenPA.com nor reopenMN.com was on his personal list or visible from the dashboard screenshots.

“If somebody’s doing that, I don’t own that name. I don’t own that site,” he said. “If you find any, I’ll immediately call GoDaddy [the service provider where Murphy purchased domains from] and shut them down. I’ll also be suing them.”

With a deep sigh, Murphy said he was frustrated by how things escalated.

“It was just like a torrent of everything coming at me at one time for something I didn’t even do. I was really bummed out,” he said.

“My whole purpose of this was I was trying to do something good and save people’s lives. People’s instincts are the worst. The first thing that comes to their mind is ’this guy is evil.’ They don’t think maybe he just bought the domains so he could use them for a good purpose. Nobody came up with that idea.”

Emily Bloch: (904) 359-4083

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