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“Date Lonely Housewives” Spammer Gets Busted
Email that may have targeted senior men broke all the
rules
May 26, 2005 - An operation that spammed millions
of consumers with graphic sexual descriptions to drive traffic to their
Web sites to “date lonely housewives” has been halted by the court at
the request of the Federal Trade Commission. Among other alleged
violations, the FTC says the spam emails included sexual materials in
the viewable area. Older men may have been primary targets.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy St. Eve has ordered a
temporary halt to the spamming and has frozen the assets of the outfit,
pending a hearing on the FTC’s request for a preliminary and permanent
injunction for violations of federal law.
The FTC alleges that the “date lonely wife” spam
typically contains short messages or a picture and a hyperlink promoting
the “lonely wives” service.
The agency charges that the spam violates nearly
every provision of the CAN-SPAM Act. It contains misleading headers and
deceptive subject lines. It does not contain a link to allow consumers
to opt out of receiving future spam, does not contain a valid postal
address, and does not contain the disclosure, required by law, that it
is sexually explicit.
It also includes sexual materials in the initially
viewable area of the e-mail, in violation of the FTC’s Adult Labeling
Rule. The FTC has asked the court to permanently bar the illegal spam
and to order the operation to give up its ill-gotten gains.
In papers filed with the court, the FTC alleges
that the operators control more than 180 Web sites that claim to be
registered to people around the world.
The defendants use an offshore payment processor on
the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean, have foreign bank accounts to
collect spam proceeds, and use a Cyprus-based company name and address
to front the operation.
According to the FTC, they route their spam
messages through other people’s computers, falsify contact e-mail
addresses, and obscure tools that would allow a recipient to stop or
complain about the spam. The FTC alleges that the operation is actually
U.S.-based and that the defendants are trying to conceal their
identities from U.S. law enforcers.
The FTC complaint names Cleverlink Trading Limited,
Real World Media, LLC and their principles, Brian D. Muir, Jesse
Goldberg, and Caleb Wolf Wickman. The defendants are based in
California.
The FTC complaint was filed in U.S. District Court
for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, in Chicago.
This case was brought with the “valuable
assistance” of the Microsoft Corporation, says the FTC.
NOTE: The Commission files a complaint when it has
“reason to believe” that the law has been or is being violated, and it
appears to the Commission that a proceeding is in the public interest.
The complaint is not a finding or ruling that the defendant has actually
violated the law. The case will be decided by the court.
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