My dad won a billion dollars from spam

By lav-chan
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Grand Master

lav-chan

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http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?story_...ews&c=2,1041776

CLINTON, Iowa — A federal judge awarded a Clinton Internet service provider more than $1 billion in judgments Friday in a lawsuit against companies who used his equipment to send so-called spam e-mails.

It is believed to be by far the largest judgment ever against companies accused of sending unsolicited commercial e-mail via the Internet, said those who track such practices.

“It’s definitely a victory for all of us that open up our e-mail and find lewd and malicious and fraudulent e-mail in our boxes every day,” said Robert Kramer, the owner of CIS Internet Services in Clinton.

Kramer is unlikely to ever collect the large judgment, which was made possible through an Iowa law that allows plaintiffs to claim damages of $10 per spam message, said his attorney, Kelly O. Wallace of Atlanta.

“We hope to recover at least his costs,” Wallace said of the lawsuit, originally filed in October 2003 against 300 defendants then known only as John Does. “He decided it was worthwhile to take some of these guys down.”

Kramer’s relatively small service provided e-mail for about 5,000 subscribers in the Clinton vicinity when, at one point, his Internet server received 10 million or more spam e-mails per day, according to Kramer and the judgment documents.

He was called away almost daily to repair downed e-mail servers that should run months without interruption, Kramer added.

U.S. District Judge Charles R. Wolle of the Southern District of Iowa filed the default judgments Friday against three companies under the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and the Iowa Ongoing Criminal Conduct Act:

• $360 million against Cash Link Systems Inc., a Florida corporation shut down by the Securities and Exchange Commission in July for a fraudulent investment scheme involving automatic teller machines.

• $720 million against AMP Dollar Savings Inc., an Arizona corporation that Wallace said is mainly a organization designed for spammers to hide their identities.

• $140,000 against TEI Marketing Group Inc., a Florida corporation. Wallace described TEI as one guy selling spy software.

Wallace said he has only heard of judgments up to $25 million in spam-related cases.

The president of the SpamCon Foundation, an organization based in Palo Alto, Calif., said it was the biggest judgment in a spam lawsuit she has ever heard about.

“This is just incredible,” Laura Atkins said. “I’m not aware of anything that’s been over $100 million.”

Steve Linford, the chief executive officer of a London-based spam tracker called The Spamhaus Project, also said he had not heard of a judgment reaching $1 billion, adding that such lawsuits and criminal investigations into spamming are starting to have an effect.

“But the effect is still rather small,” he said. “What we are seeing is slightly more spammers from overseas.”

While it used to be that 100 percent of spammers operated in the United States, about 10 percent of them now operate in other countries, including Russia and some Asian nations, with 70 percent of spam messages directing users to Web sites hosted in China, he said.

Kramer said the lawsuit made a difference for his business almost immediately after it was filed, but not before 4? years of taking a toll on him at both the business and personal levels.

“I was forced to set up an infrastructure that would support e-mail for millions of users,” he said. “It has consumed me.”

Friday’s judgment covers only three companies who did not respond to court papers and were found in default. The lawsuit continues against other named defendants.

“It’s a slow process and it’s not cheap,” Wallace said. “Our goal is the economic death penalty.”

He and Kramer said they began identifying the companies by doing what the spammers wanted — purchasing spy software and other products typically hawked via the e-mails, including penis enlargement pills.

“I’ve got a bottle of them sitting here,” Kramer said. “I never opened them.”

Wallace said he presented about 1,400 pieces of evidence at a hearing to determine the amount of damages, including selections from thousands of CD-ROMs full of computer usage log files showing that large numbers of spam e-mail were not atypical.

Kramer’s problems are linked to a CD-ROM sold to spammers that is called “Bulk Mailing 4 Dummies,” which includes a guide for sending spam and a large number of mainly fictitious e-mail addresses for some of the largest Internet providers in the nation, the judgment states.

While most of the addresses were for large providers such as America Online, Microsoft Network, Hotmail and Earthlink, CIS somehow had 2.8 million addresses entered on the CD-ROM, Wallace said.

Receiving e-mail at those bogus addresses uses as much computer resources as legitimate e-mail, the judgment states.

“My dad put it well when he said I was being terrorized, and I was,” Kramer said. “It’s been a hassle to catch these people because of the method they use.”

Nothing will stop spam altogether, he said.

“I think all of us as Internet service providers are always going to face spam problems,” he said. “We are still pursuing others. We’re going to catch more.”

The company, operating since 1996, has four full-time employees. Two are network administrators.

In response to the spam congestion, CIS beefed up its core infrastructure, spending thousands of dollars to upgrade the system so it could handle the traffic flow.

Kramer now calls himself a “spam professional.”

“We know how to handle this better than any other ISP (Internet service provider) in Clinton,” he said. “We can virtually eliminate spam coming to your mailbox.”

ECONOMIC DEATH PENALTY. Dad doesn't mess around. Of course, like the article says, we'll probably never actually see the full judgement. But it's pretty rad anyhow.

I kind of hope this doesn't get posted to Slashdot. Neowin is small enough to be OK, but i don't trust Slashdot.... :/

Grand Master

lav-chan

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I suppose. Um....

Well, there's my Web site where i keep all my random junk: www.skylagoon.com/usr/lav/

If you check the WHOIS for skylagoon.com it's registered to Robert Kramer of CIS Internet Services. And um. My name (or, my Internet name, anyway...) is all over the #gamemp3s and #animeongaku sites, which are hosted on skylagoon.

If that doesn't work for proof, i'll surrender to your doubts, because that's all the information i'm willing to give out. :/

Grand Master

lav-chan

Posted
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What if i don't consider this is a 'Neowinian Milestone'? <_<

I suppose this will make it to Fark, because there are a lot of people from the Quad-Cities there. And if it makes it to Fark, it'll probably be posted to Slashdot after all. I don't know who got the story first (the Clinton Herald or the Q-C Times), but whoever did will probably put it on the AP today and it'll be reported in Yahoo! or whatever your favourite news source is.

I think that's how it'd work, anyway. I don't know. :x

Grand Master

John Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
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gd story, do u have proof. You sound a bit fake :shifty:

585121711[/snapback]

I live in the same area, that newspaper is circulated everywhere around here. If I can find a copy of yesterday's paper, I'll take a picture of it and post it.

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