Posted on 04/29/2004 11:38:59 AM PDT by tdadams
WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities are filing the first criminal charges under the government's new anti-spam legislation.
Federal officials have announced the arrest of two men in a landmark case from the Detroit area.
Four people in Detroit have been charged with e-mailing fraudulent sales pitches for weight-loss products. Two of the suspects have not been found.
The cases are the first criminal prosecutions under the government's new "Can Spam" legislation.
Officials say they received more than 10,000 complaints about unwanted e-mails.
The suspects are accused of disguising their identities in hundreds of thousands of sales pitches and delivering e-mails by bouncing messages through unprotected relay computers on the Internet.
The e-mails were sent out under a variety of company names, including AIT Herbal, Avatar Nutrition and Phoenix Avatar, identified collectively as the Avatar Companies, News.com reported.
April 29, 2004
BY MIKE WENDLAND
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Four Oakland County men have become the first people in the nation to face criminal charges of violating the new federal law against sending spam.
The four are accused of secretly commandeering computers that forward e-mail for some of the nation's biggest corporations -- including Ford Motor Co. -- to send millions of junk messages advertising herbal supplements, diet patches and sexual enhancement pills and products.
Other unwitting companies and agencies whose computers were used include Unisys Corp., Amoco Corp., the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and the U.S. Army Information Center, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Wednesday.
The charges against the four were to be officially announced at a news conference by the Federal Trade Commission in Washington today.
Christopher Chung, 30, and Mark Sadek, 27, both of West Bloomfield, were arraigned in federal court in Detroit on Wednesday. Two others, Daniel and James Lin, believed to be brothers and also from West Bloomfield, were being sought, federal officials said.
The four are accused of forging return e-mail addresses on millions of unsolicited advertisements sent across the Internet, often through the use of what are known as open proxy servers, or systems that will relay e-mail from any point on the Internet, owned by unsuspecting businesses and government agencies.
The use of proxy servers has long been a trick used by spammers -- who now account for about 60 percent of all e-mail -- to obscure their identity.
"This has been a problem that's plagued the Net for years, and the fact that corporations and government agencies still have open mail servers is scandalous," said Tony Robinson, a security consultant for Pioneer Technology in Sterling Heights. "Somebody dropped the ball."
The 21-page federal complaint alleges that the Oakland foursome also forged the "from" part of the header that appears at the top of a message, using fake names and bogus e-mail addresses, in violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act that took effect Jan. 1.
They were caught through a wide-ranging investigation that involved U.S. postal inspectors, investigators from the Federal Trade Commission, technology experts from Microsoft and America Online and a network of anti-spam activists stretching across the world.
Terrence Berg, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case, said the government's action shows that there are teeth in the new federal law.
"This is just a start," Berg said. "There will be many more prosecutions like this. The government is determined to do something about the flood of spam that is polluting the Internet."
Jim Feinberg, an attorney for Sadek, said he wasn't familiar with the details of the case beyond the complaint. He said Sadek earns his living as a valet for a car-parking company and lives with his parents in West Bloomfield.
"He's just a hard-working young guy," Feinberg said.
Chung and his attorney could not be reached Wednesday.
Besides violating the anti-spam law, which is punishable by up to five years in prison, the four are also accused of mail fraud -- which carries a 20-year maximum sentence -- for selling an allegedly fraudulent skin patch for weight loss through junk e-mail.
FTC investigators ordered the patch and had it analyzed. Dr. Michael Jensen, identified in the complaint as a Mayo Clinic nutritional expert, was asked to evaluate the claims and said the ingredients in the patch "would not achieve the weight loss as advertised."
The group also sent spam advertising penis enlargement pills and Viagra.
Unraveling the trail of spam took four months. Berg said that because of the use of proxy servers, trying to trace the spam back to the original sender was difficult.
That's where investigators tapped the network of activists who maintain lists of the top spammers around the world and try to get them banned from Internet service providers.
It's a cat-and-mouse game. A spammer often can send out millions of junk messages before being detected. But sometimes, anti-spam and security experts scam the spammers.
That's what the complaint alleges against the Oakland County men.
In Karlsruhe, Germany, an Internet security expert and activist named Anders Henke runs what he calls a "proxy pot," a system that simulates a mail proxy but doesn't actually forward mail. It sits on the Internet, looking vulnerable to the sophisticated scanning software used by spammers to sniff out open proxies.
Starting in early January, the complaint says, Henke's proxy pot intercepted 5 million attempts from computer accounts linked to the Michigan men.
Berg says other anti-spam activists in the United States assisted in the investigation, too. "There's some very capable and dedicated private citizens out there whose help proved invaluable to us," he said.
Besides the criminal charges, the FTC is expected to take action in civil court seeking restraining orders against the men.
A preliminary hearing for Sadek and Chung will be held May 18 in federal court in Detroit. They were freed on $10,000 unsecured bond after arraignment before Federal Magistrate Mona Majzoub.
Contact MIKE WENDLAND at 313-222-8861 or mwendland@freepress.com.
No Brainer...follow the money.
I finally was able to get rid of the last virus and then my flat panel monitor went on the fritz. Does anyone know if the virus could have caused this? I have had that monitor for 2 years, but have used it less than 20 times, so I wouldn't think it would be from wear. It just flashes real bright and then goes dark.
The opt-out from telephone courtesy calls was handled much better. We need something similar.
How would catching violators of such a law be any easier than catching violators of the Can Spam law?
If it's 2 years old, and hasn't been used that often, then I'd say you got a lemon.
Take it from a techie.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.