Man, for me this is like "deja vu all over again." Almost the same thing happened to a Jeep forum I was a member of several years ago. In our case, though, the guy who had signed out the domain name just ... disappeared. Stopped paying the bill for the server, didn't renew the domain when it came up, and neither the ISP nor the domain registration people would deal with anyone sle or give us access to keep the site up because the dirtbag was legally the "owner" of the site.
Tough times here in Hawkmoonville, but I dug up some pennies for the Jeep site and I'll dig up some more for Oleg ...