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Where's Sanford Wallace Now?
capt.Hij writes "There is a story at Fosters about Sanford Wallace who is described as once being the 'King of Spam.' The story describes how he made lots of money in the early days of the internet but got tired of fighting the spam fighters. He is now the owner of a night club in New Hampshire. Here is how he describes his life now: 'Back in the day, I used to make lots of money surrounded by computers. Now, I make lots of money surrounded by beautiful women.'" If "Sanford Wallace" doesn't ring a bell, you need to read some old stories.
Spam king switches tune: Net ad guru finds new life running nightclub
By NATE PARDUE
Staff Writer
Sanford Wallace, the owner of Plum Crazy nightclub on Route 11 in Rochester, poses at the DJ station where he spends the majority of his time. (Mark Avery/staff photo)
ROCHESTER -- He may be known as "DJ MasterWeb" now to his nightclub regulars at Plum Crazy, but Sanford Wallace once ruled the Internet as the king of spam.
By his own account, Wallace, who owns the hopping night spot Plum Crazy on Route 11, was, at one time, responsible for about 80 percent of direct Internet mailings sent to in-boxes around the globe.
The mailings are popularly known as "spam" in the Web world and are virtually impossible to avoid, despite constant efforts to do away with them.
But in the early 1990s, not many people had even heard of the Internet, never mind Internet spam.
"It was junk mail. I have no problem using the term," said the 35-year-old Wallace.
Wallace first learned the craft of computer programming in 1990 from the Chubb Institute, a couple of years before the Internet boom of 1993 and 1994.
Prior to that, the Internet was mainly used by the government and military -- certainly not widely available to the passive computer owner.
When the Web became accessible to the general public, Wallace's entrepreneurial mind began churning.
Much like the junk mail that came through his old-fashioned mailbox every day, Wallace thought there must be a way to transfer that method to the rapidly growing cyberworld.
Wallace found ways to collect a massive list of personal e-mail addresses. He then contacted businesses big and small and asked if -- for a fee -- they would be interested in getting their names out to hundreds, if not millions of people.
In turn, the companies would send their information to Wallace, who formed a Philadelphia, Pa.-based company under the name Cyber Promotions in 1994. He would create advertisements, and send them off into the World Wide Web.
Over the next three years, Wallace sent as many as 30 million e-mails a day to consumers from 10,000 clients, and made millions of dollars in the process.
"I didn't think there was anything wrong with what I was doing. It wasn't as annoying as telemarketing, because with e-mail, I wasn't interrupting anyone's dinner," Wallace said.
But some heavy hitters with very deep pockets didn't quite see it that way.
From 1995 until 1997, Cyber Promotions was involved in 16 separate lawsuits, with companies like America Online and CompuServe.
The basis of many of the lawsuits was that unlike phone lines, computers were considered private property, and Wallace was accused of violating that privacy.
"People were essentially lining up at my virtual door," Wallace said. "I made a lot of lawyers very rich."
Wallace also attracted the ire of Internet enthusiasts -- or computer geeks, as he classifies them -- who strongly voiced their disapproval and outright loathing of Wallace on message boards throughout the Web.
The distaste infamously earned him the nickname "Spamford" in online circles around the country.
The negative reactions and relentless lawsuits started to take their toll, and Wallace decided to get out of the business in 1997.
"I was getting tired of the controversy. My goal was never to bother people," Wallace said.
Wallace took another stab at Internet spamming with SmartBot, a permission-based system where marketers and consumers would agree to be sent spam e-mail, similar to the check boxes found on most online registration pages.
The business lasted for a few more years until the dot-com crash of 2000, when hundreds of self-made millionaires lost their shirts on investments that peaked and fell in just a couple of years.
That was it for Wallace's life as "Spamford."
"A lot of people lost a lot of money. I did too, but there were people out there who got it a lot worse,"
And if you think Sanford Wallace was the original "Spam King", you need to read some even older stories.
Shameless plug: the O'Reilley book "Stopping Spam" has a good history of Sanford Wallace, the so-called "Spam King".
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Condolences from all of us who wish him well in his new life. I hope this worked out ok.
Check out the club's webpage at
http://www.clubplumcrazy.com/
(Which amusingly has a free vip signup via email...)
Or just wish him well via email. it lists an address of:
masterwebfanclub@aol.com
(I guess he did not want to deal with spam on his own domain, thus the aol account.)
Finally, there is a newsgroup if you wish to find out more about the club itself:
http://pub89.ezboard.com/bclubplumcrazy
Lets be mature about this and not abuse these points of contact.
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
This club is almost as tired as all the spam email chubby used to send out. I think you'd be "Plum Crazy" to spend your time driving out to that spot in the sticks. I can tell you that his DJ skills are terribly lacking, and if it weren't for UNH (located a mere 15 miles from this club) he'd still be interested in turning a buck by sending out that garbage.
-A.M.
Pimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
dude, it's the wrong one. he's in new hampshire...
I managed to get an ISP to shut off the unending flow of spam by setting up a filter to bounce the spammers e-mails to every contact that I could find for the hosting ISP...several thousand times. After about 4000 e-mails were sent in less than an hour, the spammer disappeared from their network.
Mind you, this was after weeks of complaint without action.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!