Does that include the two figures after the decimal point?

from www.toronto.sun.com – Israel Melendez barely used his Twitter account, so he didn’t mind letting the Israeli government have it — for a fee, of course.

The Spanish adult-website owner told Spain’s Publico newspaper that he set up the @Israel account under just his first name to avoid contact with his ex-girlfriend.

It soon became flooded with politics. People worldwide, assuming this was the official account for the State of Israel, started sending Melendez messages criticizing the Israeli government.

Then one day, he got a message from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asking if the account could be bought.

He said they made him an offer that included “five zeroes.”

“I did not used much, in fact, for months not used it,” Melendez told Publico from Miami, where he resides.

Username squatting and account selling are against Twitter’s policies.

“Unless you have been specifically permitted to do so in a separate agreement with Twitter, you agree that you will not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade or resell the services for any purpose,” reads Twitter’s rules.

Melendez said Israel purchased his password, de-activated the account, and re-launched it as a new account.

“They got on the phone, I gave them the password, they saw that it worked and they gave me a cheque at the consulate,” Melendez said.

This isn’t the first time someone’s done this. In April, 2009, CNN bought the @cnnbrk account from a man named James Cox.

The Israeli foreign ministry moved its @israelMFA account to @israel on Aug. 26.