he needs to call his registar and tell them what happened, hopefully he still has the receipt where he registered it or has enough infromation to prove he is the real person who registered the domain name

Hmm, nothing like replying to your own reply, but I thought I'd officially end the thread by letting everyone know that David got his domain back.  How did he do it?  Someone that read his post knew the CEO of GoDaddy, which is where his stolen domain was parked.  They worked with David to confirm that he was the official owner (driver's license, signature, etc) and then transfered ownership back to him.  Just goes to show that it isn't what you know, its who you know.

http://www.davidairey.co.uk/

If you are a godaddy customer and your domain is stolen forget getting it back without spending thousands to get it back. Godaddy does not deploy any safety net to prevent someone from the inside or outside from stealing a domain. All they do is send you a confirming email tha the act has already occured. The email states if you did not intentially transfer the domain you can alert Godaddy "customer service" and they would remedy the situation. Not true. I followed their procedure and no one could care less. I even ask them to review their server logs as the thief surely left an I.P. to trace. Again it all fell on deaf ears.

The thief actually offered to sell it back to me for a grand!

Here's what I posted at ICANN tonight...

If someone steals something of value here in the states we call the police and they take a statement and initiate an investigation. Sometimes the property is recovered and the thief prosecuted. All this is undertaken without cost locally  and without attorneys or empaneled "impartial" arbiters.

If however someone working at Godaddy a U.S. company steals a domain from a customer in the U.S. the victim can't call the police because unlike all other thefts this one falls under some obscure remote little known foreign body located on the other side of the planet where really good chocolate comes from. Now here we have a U.S. crime and a U.S. victim yet the victim cannot remedy the crime in his or her  own country. The process of recovering a stolen domain involves the hiring of an attorney that specializes in domain theft and bloated ICANN rules and procedures. This attorney will then send a warning letter to the offending basically requesting that they not continue their naughtiness and to return the stolen domain. If after some statutory period of time the crook fails to change his evil ways then the victim can escalate the process by paying ICANN to empanel a few objective justice seekers to take the helm. Now from here who knows what will transpire but the victim will wind up paying thousands of dollars to recover a ten dollar domain. There is something seriously wrong with this bizarre and counter intuitive process that needs to be completely revamped. Seriously could this goofy process be any more arcane or asinine? I think not. Sorry I am an engineer and I can't seem to adapt to nonsensical impractical conditions. I always assume that systems evolve and improve according to a Darwinian like model. If Darwin was faced with recovering a stolen domain he would have shredded his works and let man know that his days were numbered as evolution would cease at the monolith called ICANN.

Jack Durban, victim of domain theft and ICANN ineptness and obsolescence.