Scott Richter Settles Another Spam Suit

Oh looky, it's our "friends" Steve and Scott Richter in the news again. This time, they've settled with MySpace for $6 million after being accused of spamming thousands of MySpace.com users -- and using phished accounts to do it (see today's IT Blogwatch for more).

Of course, Scott gave up spamming some time ago. Or did he? Brian Krebs today offers an interesting investigation into domain registrations of spamvertised Web sites:

More than three quarters of all Web sites advertised through spam are clustered at just 10 domain name registrars ... Out of the 15,000 spam-advertised domains we examined, nearly half -- 7,142 names -- were registered through a Broomfield, Colo. company called Dynamic Dolphin ... the seventh most-popular registrar among spammers ... [and] owned by a company called CPA Empire, which in turn is owned by Media Breakaway LLC. The CEO of Media Breakaway is none other than Scott Richter, the once self-avowed "Spam King" who claims to have quit the business. Anti-spam groups also have recently implicated Media Breakaway in the alleged hijacking of more than 65,000 Internet addresses for use in sending e-mail and hosting commercial Web sites.

Remember kids, Rule #1: Spammers lie.

Jeremy Jaynes Lost Appeal, but...

Hmmm, so I see that Jeremy Jaynes has lost his appeal in Virginia that spamming is protected speech under the U.S. First Amendment. (Thanks to Slashdot for the heads-up.)

Jolly good, and no surprise there, I think. However, why on Earth was it a 4-to-3 split decision? What were those three state supreme court judges thinking?

Well, according to the AP:

Justice Elizabeth Lacy wrote in a dissent that the law is "unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mail including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment."

Oh, balderdash. I find it really hard to believe that the American founding fathers intended my email to be full of spam.

Alan Ralsky Indicted

Well well. It seems the Feds have decided that Ralsky has been helping the Russian stock kiters...

A federal grand jury indictment was unsealed today in Detroit charging 11 persons, including Alan M. Ralsky ... in a wide-ranging international fraud scheme involving the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mailing, or "spamming" ... The charges arose after a three-year investigation ... revealed a sophisticated and extensive spamming operation that, as alleged in the indictment, largely focused on running a stock “pump and dump” scheme.

Much, much more at today's IT Blogwatch.

(Happy new year, by the way.)