Do It For State Domain Name Crime

Submission 22,477

Overview

Do It For State Domain Name Crime refers to the 2017 crime committed by Rossi Adams, the influencer behind Iowa State College "State Snaps," known for posting suggestive content to Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. Rossi Adams hired his cousin Sherman Hopkins to hijack the DoItForState.com domain name from Ethan Deyo by breaking into his house with a gun. Sherman Hopkins was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2018 and Adams was sentenced to 14 years in December 2019.

Background

On January 29th, 2015, news station KCCI uploaded "special report: #doitforstate" to YouTube and received over 1,400 views in four years (shown below). Soon after this news story was published, brothers Chris and Ethan Deyo bought both the domain name DoItForState and began advertising their events using the hashtag #doitforthestate. After unsuccessfully attempting to retrieve the domain name for the next two years, Rossi Adams^[6] hired his cousin Sherman Hopkins to use force to obtain the domain name. On June 21st, 2017, in Cedar Rapids^[1] Sherman Hopkins broke into the home Ethan Deyo and threatened him by gunpoint to transfer the domain name through GoDaddy. According to the Washington Post,^[5] "The two men began to fight for the gun. It went off, hitting E.D. in the leg. Still, he managed to twist the gun away from Hopkins, then shot the intruder multiple times in his chest before calling 911. Hopkins survived his injuries, and by the next month, Adams was also in police custody."

Developments

Sentencing

On June 13th, 2018, Sherman Hopkins was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for attempting to extort the domain name and for armed home invasion.^[2] On December 9th, 2019, Adams was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison after plotting to hijack the domain name.^[3] On December 10th, Medium^[4] published a true-crime article "The Influencer and the Hit Man:
How a years-long domain name feud ended in a bloody shootout."