Former AVN Female Performer of the Year Inari Vachs is miffed over the apparent transfer of her domain name, InariVachs.com, to a Glen Cove, Long Island-based order fulfillment service she accuses of trying to strong-arm her into a business relationship that includes selling movies other than her own productions on her Website.
“The way they’ve decided to handle this situation,” Vachs told AVN.com, “is by not even deciding to contact me. At any of my [online] stores, I have interest only in selling the movies I produce. Now [they’re] trying to force themselves into a business relationship with me.”
The company in question is MallCom.com, which helps adult Websites set up customized online stores to sell assorted adult video, DVD, and novelty products, among other things. Vachs said they got her domain name in a package of adult site domains sold to the company by a man named Royce Bunn, whom Vachs described as a fan who first set up the domain “for me, or so I was told, so that no one else would do so and try to sell it back to me.”
Except that, this week, Vachs said, she received an e-mail from Bunn in which he allegedly said MallCom.com’s owner, identified only as Jerry, would agree to return InariVachs.com to her if Bunn paid an unspecified sum of money and if Vachs agreed to a five-year exclusive deal with MallCom.com, selling only his movies through her store.
“I refuse to be forced into a business relationship with anybody,” snapped Vachs, whose IV Multimedia and XXXInari.com contain her primary Internet presence now. “I’ve been doing business since 1997, have been doing business on the Web since 2002, and I am in the process of trademarking my name.”
MallCom.com lists only its Glen Cove, Long Island business address on its Website. AVN.com was unable to obtain a telephone number for the business. Neither MallCom.com, Jerry, nor Bunn responded to e-mail queries from AVNOnline.com before this story went to press.
Vachs’ relationship with Bunn traces to 1998, when he made InariVachs.com into a free fan site for her, until she took over the domain in 2000 and made it a membership site, hosting it through Adult Diary, run by Lucky Smith.
“Lucky and I had gotten some transfer papers from Royce at one time,” Vachs said, “but there was something wrong with the papers – or we didn’t get the right things, I’m not sure now. Anyway, the way I understood it, I would take over ownership of the domain upon its renewal in December 2004.”
Then, she said, the site went down this past December, while she was traveling out of the United States. “Lucky assumed I did it,” she said. “I didn’t find out about it until I tried to catch up on my e-mails the second week of January.” But she spent two days digging and determined Bunn sold a number of his adult sites to MallCom.com, including InariVachs.com – without having contacted her about it.
“Whether or not Royce meant to include my domain name, he did, without once contacting me,” she said. “At this point, he broke a verbal contract.” She said she finally did make contact with Bunn, whom she said told her she “hadn’t been in touch with him in some time, so he just assumed that I wouldn’t care.”
In a series of e-mail exchanges between Vachs and Bunn earlier this year, copies of which were made available to AVN.com, Bunn claimed he sold InariVachs.com among other adult domains he either sold or allowed to expire, saying he wanted to back away from the adult Internet business. He also said he had not heard directly from Vachs in a very long time, and that he contacted “the party which obtained the domain,” asking them if he could buy it back from them. He also asked Vachs how she learned the domain had been sold.
In subsequent e-mails, Bunn says he had dealt with MallCom.com’s owner for years, and “he has never cheated me in the past.” Vachs said she herself attempted to e-mail Jerry, saying in one such message that she never had plans to sell movies produced by any company except her own IV Multimedia, while accusing MallCom.com of interfering with her ability to earn “my normal salary” from InariVachs.com as a pay site for the past two months.
Vachs, in one reply, said MallCom.com owned something that rightfully belongs to her, telling Bunn she wanted only for MallCom.com to relinquish the domain name so she could continue with her day-to-day business, adding she was finally unable to receive messages through her InariVachs.com e-mail address from fans and business associates.
An adult video and film star since 1997, Vachs was named AVN Female Performer of the Year in 2000, as well as winning the AVN Best Group Sex Scene, Video the same year. She was also named XRCO’s Female Performer of the Year and Best Actress that year. She won two more AVN Awards, both in 2001, for Best Couples Sex Scene, Video and Best Anal Sex Scene, Film. And Genesis named her Porn Star of the Year for 2002.
“I am not a product of someone else’s contract promotion,” Vachs said emphatically to AVN.com. “I work very hard at my own success, and now need to work even harder to keep it.”
