A man is charged with stealing a prime piece of internet real estate and reselling it to a NBA basketball player.

Daniel Goncalves, 25, of Union in northern New Jersey, hacked into an online account belonging to one of the owners of the P2P.com domain name. Coppers think he shifted ownership to himself and resold the website address on eBay to basketballer Mark Madsen, a Los Angeles Clippers forward who did not know the name was stolen.

Goncalves, who works for an online research firm, was arrested on Thursday on felony charges of theft by unlawful taking or deception, identity theft and computer theft. Julian Castellanos, a state police spokesman, said each of the three counts carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The State Police say that P2P.com is worth $US200,000 because of its relation to peer-to-peer file sharing. A lot of companies would love to have that domain name.