Slashdot Mirror
Spammer Profile: Scott Richter
prostoalex writes "Westword.com published an article on Scott Richter, the owner of what is supposedly the nation's fastest-growing online marketing company, which mostly specialized in sending out those unsolicited electronic mail messages. Richter is the guy currently being sued by New York Attorney General and Microsoft Corporation for sending out nearly 9000 e-mails only to Hotmail accounts."
WTF is HIS email address???
Voice your support for the Death Penalty for spamers!
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
It's bad enough that they're spamming me, but then they lie about me signing up for their list. I didn't sign up, I know I didn't sign up, they know I know I didn't sigh up, so why bother?
This guy must be Andy Richter's brother - the guy who wrote the MyDoom virus!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Just yesterday, Microsoft was devising a plan to invoice spammers, now they are suing a spammer. Who needs the operating system business when you got hotmail!
9000 spam emails doesn't sound like that much. An acquaintance of mine is the developer of si20 and there's more spam than 9000 in a measly half a day of operations.
Is this merely a symbolic legal pursuit? Or is this considered a lot of spam by the powers that be?
He'll be about an eight inch tall, squashed under my shoe if I ever meet him.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
The policy from the guy's spam business site:
It prohibits:
"Unsolicited promotions, advertising or solicitations (commonly referred to as "spam"), including, without limitation, commercial advertising and informational announcements, except to those who have explicitly requested such e-mails."
Hmmmm.....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
By any chance, does that article mention anything that he's fatally allergic to, say, something that could be purchased in bulk from a supermarket?
Just wondering.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
He's a spammer! Burn him!
Oh wait, he's spamming Microsoft Hotmail accounts? Oh hey man welcome back to the community!
Spamhaus.org rates him as the nation's (world's?) #4 spammer.
-- Will program for bandwidth
You see this in business news all the time. Brand X is the fastest growing company blah blah. Well, yeah. It's easy to see big growth numbers when you have three employees.
--- Ban humanity.
I am amazed that you can run an entire business of sending out emails that no one reads. I understand tha overhead = negligable thing, but still...How can he afford the trained monkies to write these things.
Most spammers run and hide from their reputation, but the even scummier version is proud of what they've done, and seek the publicity of being the most known spammer of the time... figuring that'll be good for their business, those who want ads by spam but don't know how to do it will turn to him.
It clearly needs 'insightful'.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I am surprised that mass emailing is still profitable in America, with its restrictive new laws against spam. From India, cheaper connection costs and abundant IT expertise, in addition to laws which allow complete freedom of email, would seem to make India the much better choice for mass emailing business. How long till competition puts Mr. Richter out of business?
...that you'll die sooner or later, and then you won't get any more spam.
Unless of course there's life after death, in which case you'll probably get spamned for all eternity.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Rule #1: Spammers lie.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Is it possible to "SPAM back" someone by the means of /. effect?
/.-ers sending angry mail to some sites/accounts each day ...
Imagine a couple hundred thousand
One thing though is to somehow avoid showing your own address in order not to get into SPAMmers databases.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Sadly, all we are doing is giving this guy free advertising. Even bas publicity is good publicity. On a different note, a lot of these guys are not ashamed of what they do. I met one once at an Open Source conference and when you ask him what he does he very plainly states "I'm a spammer". The guy was a total pariah.
"OptInRealBig sends out between 50 million and 250 million e-mails a day, generating close to $2 million a month in revenues."
And people wonder why spammers do what they do. There are $2m worth of idiots connected to the internet.
Woohoo! Go Microsoft!
I hope you win this one.
chown -R us.
$2mil/month? Riiiight. Someone should let the IRS know, as I highly suspect that they've not heard anything about this $2mil/month revenue.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
For all his success, why doesn't he sport a William Shatner(tm) Rug on that shiny dome?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Bah. I've never trusted Scott Richter and don't see why this comes as such a surprise. He used to be the head U.S. weapons inspector for UNSCOM back in the 1990s and at that time was very adamant about the fact that Saddam Hussein had WMD. Then all of a sudden George W. Bush is elected and suddenly Richter changes his tune. Now he claims that Iraq destroyed all of their weapons while he was an inspector and that there are no more weapons.
The bottom line is this: Scott Richter's public service record is spotty *AT BEST*, and the fact that he has now (apparently) turned to a career of spamming should cast doubts on *all* of his activities for all American citizens.
I get about 30 messages a day from this guy's "Allied Marketing Promotions Inc." on my Yahoo account. They usually arrive in chunks of 5-10 messages at a time, all peddling different "products", mostly the same spam fare such as mortgages and pills of one sort or another. It started about two weeks ago but Yahoo's spam filter still hasn't caught on...
Definitely someone with an aluminum bat deficiency.
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
a felony conviction arising from a fencing investigation two years ago
I know jabbing and swishing at another guy with a foil is pretty lame, but I didn't realize it was illegal.
Strange enough, I think even Linuxers agree with you.
:D
Want to help out? Just call:
(303) 464-8164
And ask for Sales, tell them your interested in spamming 9600 hotmail accounts, and any email account with "SCO" in it...
That phone number is taken from their website. I am 100% that emailing, DDOS, etc will have no effect on them, but I am 80% sure that getting 200+ phone calls, will definitely hurt business! (not to mention if you ask for a call back, leave voice mail, etc. to flood there systems.)..
LOL!
Go Jebus Go!!
Says asshat: What people don't understand is that the Internet isn't free.
GOD I FUCKING HATE THESE PEOPLE!
Since when does this dickhead own the Internet? Since when is it "not free" as in "you owe me money"?
ARGH! I not only support the death penalty for these asshats, I think they need to deport this guy's goddamn family to central Cambodia.
The absolute contempt that these people have for all other living beings outside their small inner circles is so mind-numbingly infuriating that I can't even come up with a suitable rant against this guy. The absolute level of FURY that these moronic losers can invoke through their childish, imbecilic, self-centered "give it all to me" outlooks on life could never BEGIN to compare to the narcissism displayed by everyone in Hollywood COMBINED. NEVER HAVE I SO DESIRED TO POP SOMEONE'S HEAD LIKE AN OVERINFLATED BALLOON!
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
But according to him he's raking in the big bucks! He used to be fat, but now he's 240lbs! Hey, I wonder if he has a large penis now as well?
Point is, the article failed to mention the fact that he is still stealing resources from other ISP machines. While he claims that the Internet isn't free, and he's one of those good "internet marketer bulk emailers" and that all 40 million email addresses were opt-in, and that he's not one of those scummy "hard core spammers" and he honors all remove requests...
Spammers ALWAYS LIE!
He and Darl should get together sometime...
----
I know, this is probably redundant and has probably already been said... but I do hate when thieveses like this joker just keep getting away with spamming.... so the question is asked. Who is giving him the money to continue his "business" and how can we (or anyone) stop it?
Here we see a prime example of self-delusion and self-righteousness substituting for morality. Right, the Internet isn't free. But I didn't realize that I was paying Scott Richter to get online--I thought I was paying Verizon for DSL service.
It is entertaining to see how much these people hate Steve Linford though.
It's really simple folks: if what you are doing is legit, why do you have to forge your headers? Why do you have to hide behind false email addresses? If it is legit, why do you have such a hard time getting legitimate ISPs to sell you bandwidth? Figure it out.
From a PDF of the lawsuit:
OptInRealBig, LLC is a limited liability corporation, with its principal place of business at 1333 W 120th Ave, Suite 101 Westminster, CO 80234.
Wonder if he is getting enough mail at is office? I would expect that a few additional catalogs would do alot to spruce up the place.
How the hell can you call spamming "online marketing". Although I'm, a techie, I have respect for skilled marketeers, analyzing markets and fitting producsts to customers.. Spammers just dump their shit indiscriminately. It's like calling the burger flipper at McDonalds a chef!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Un-news
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Rule 1: Spammers lie Take a look at a few of his quotes here
The article about him from the BBC is what scares me. "We are very excited [about the new CAN-SPAM law]," said Scott Richter, the president of OptInRealBig, an e-mail marketing firm in Westminster, Colo. "All of our clients had been worried about the California law. In the last two hours we have been booking a lot of orders for January."
This guy is the kind of guy that would piss in your pool. Now that he's got the internet, he gets to piss on millions of people at a time.
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
the contact info is on their web site, if you have any questions. (Or want to offer a valuble new product) Contact us via e-mail: info@optinbig.com or phone: (303) 464-8164
OptInBig is honored to work with many of the best online e-marketers and e-retailers the Internet has to offer. Please contact us to discuss our clients who have experienced a successful partnership with us firsthand. Let us help you make the most out of your marketing campaigns!
How embarassing to be on that list.
They all have been in some sort of legal trouble.
And it usually involves extortion, scam or theft. I wish the media would concentrate more on their criminal past. Maybe then people would get a clue and not do any business with them.
According to Clint Talbott of the Daily Camera, Scott Richter's office address is:
1333 W. 120th Avenue Suite 101
Westminster, CO, 80234
No mention of a home mailing address, unfortunately. Maybe it's actually listed in the Qwest white pages? Somehow, though, I doubt it. . .
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Therefore mass email sent from India can be more effective because it does not have such easily filtered strings and headers.
(no message)
Please sign them up for every catalog and junk mail item you can.
1333 W 120th AVE
Suite 101
Westminster, CO 80234
US
+1.3034648164
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
On optinbig's site [optinbig.com], they list a phone number to call to set up an appointment.
I'm older now and out of touch with go-to resources of a certain nature, but I'd be nice to see someone do some DOS via phone (the nice thing about a phone is that you don't even need a distributed DOS to get the job done).
Call me old fashioned.
G-Force music visualization
Read this article, then substitute all instances of "terrorist" for "Scott Richter".
The article is about terrorists, but could easily be seen as a way for a spammer to make a lot of money.
On a related note, I've noticed the spam filters of my yahoo account has consistantly failed in recent days to block stuff from one or two specific spamers. I think we're beginning to see the wide-spread deployment of those new ani-filtering techniques some have talked about. These annoying idiots are clogging up my mailbox to the point where I need to empty it out myself once or twice a day such that legitimate mail don't get bounced back.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
"What we need is a good old fashioned hanging." -- FTC Commissioner Orson Swindell at the 2003 FTC Spam Conference.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I don't know his email address, but his PHONE NUMBER is
(303) 464-8164
N'joy!!
ps- Don't forget to ask if his penis is larger!!
How about a Slashdot Interview with this guy (or another spammer)? I think it would be really interesting to see what (civilized) questions we could ask him and what his answers would be. He says that he puts himself in front of the media so it shouldn't be too hard to get in touch with him.
How about it editors? (I tried suggesting an interview with a spammer before, but since I didn't have a name or contact information the editors didn't want to hear it. I wonder why I should do their job for them when they're the ones getting paid...)
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
The Daily Camera a local newspaper in Boulder also has this story. A nice quote: Richter did not return my phone calls Thursday, so I couldn't ask him how someone who admitted he was guilty of a felony could now assert his innocence. Since he didn't answer the phone, maybe he'd respond to a letter. His office address is 1333 W. 120th Avenue, Suite 101, Westminster, Colo., 80234. (Just in case you're curious.)
Not that it bothers me, even if something get's through I use AntiVir, Kerio, and Mozzila.
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
This Kiwi guy was sending approx one hundred million emails a day!! From memory he eventually stopped after receiving a series of death threats at his home. Big spam operator exposed
serenity now!
The sign on the window next to the entrance of OptInRealBig's offices in Westminster leaves no room for misunderstanding. Or irony.
NO SOLICITING.
Thats right. Thanks to the spamlords its a cost-center for most firms transmitting and receiving this junk instead of a profit center.
Look, they've published his name, the name of his business, and the address of his web site. It took me one whois lookup to post it to Slashdot, and sometime next week, he'll probably get a little extra snail mail.
Do these guys realize what they're exposing themselves to? I'm sure it's good to publicize your business, but the receiving crowd is going to be exceptionally hostile.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Start a new email account, and never check it again. No worries.
Somebody should pull an Alan Ralsky on this guy. Sign him up for so much junk mail, they have to deliver it on a dump-truck to his office, every single day.
It might be good to get "a cleaner". I know a guy all we have to do is supply a name. But he has some rules 1. No women 2. No kids Let me know if you are interested.
I'd say work. And raid roach spray.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm going to assume you went ahead and gave him the ass whooping he deserves. Otherwise, the rest of us will have to do so to you for passing up the opportunity.
Yeah, but then he'll just take some herbal vi@gra and grow back to 6'1", because everyone knows it makes pricks get bigger.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We've always been here baby. We've been known to toss out the odd troll if things get a little too slow.
At 6'1" and 240lbs., the man has a BMI of 31.7, in the Obese category (even worse than Overweight). Sure, he may not be pushing 300lbs anymore, but he's still fat.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
What I've always wondered is if the President gets spam, and if so, does he buy the penis enlargers (or did capturing Saddam do the trick). I'm sure the spammers would know.
.
I have the international phone number for them right here, I'm in the UK and I just wasted 5 seconds of thier time going "um" and apologising. Perhaps someone with a stronger constitution can take out +1 303 464 8164
Official source for this number, from the optinbig website.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
classic.
I am Jack's writable stack pointer.
A lot of spammers are based in unfriendly countries and are very difficult to sue.
Not true. The vast majority of spammers are based in the US.
My favorite quote from the article:
"We made nothing," Richter recalls. "I thought all you had to do was put up a Web site and you'd be a millionaire. I didn't understand the Internet."
Richter, on his first attempt at online marketing.
He just summed up the entire tech bubble.
Somehow I'm actually a little tired of putting spammer info up on Slashdot. Does that make me a bad person?
------
The long awaited return of Flan.org
I wish the media would concentrate more on their criminal past. Maybe then people would get a clue and not do any business with them.
The sort of people mindless enough to actually look into a badly-worded spam for increased penis size, longer orgasms, debt consolidation, or what-have-you aren't likely to notice or care about the past histories of the people that have ensnared them.
The coolest voice ever.
There are $2m worth of idiots connected to the internet
Read that again - it doesn't say that they get $2M worth of orders, it says that they get $2M worth of revenue.
As in, moron 'A' decideds "hey, I want to advertise my new product, but I don't know how - so I'll pay "OptInRealBig" to do it for me.. they wouldn't be doing anything illegal, they told me so."
Spammers don't make money selling stuff, they make money by conning 'advertisers'.
Moron 'A' doesn't need to be connected to the internet to be conned out of his money.
info@optinbig.com
I really do hope the spambots pick THIS one up!
Now I can't even spam without worrying about being outsourced to India. Next you'll tell me that Indians can be crackwhores in East Oakland as well. What career options are left for me?
Try again. Your transmission contained an error.
I'm guessing he doesn't get paid by the click. Companies probably come to him with mass-mailings they would like distributed. He charges his fee to distribute them. When the company realizes those mass mailings resulted in ZERO new business, they move on to another strategy. Next in line is another company who wants to do the same thing and make the same mistake. It's an industry of lies and one-time customers, me thinks.
Buying from = conducting legal transaction = doing business with.
Why? If they don't bounce, they are certainly unread. Why waste your time sending them hate mail?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Most people have a fatal reaction to water, taken in large enough doses.
You can buy various brands. I like San Pellorino.
Judging from the grammar and spelling in most spams I'd say trained monkeys were writing them.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I once complained to "dotregistrar.com" about one of their clients. I used their web form to file the complaint, since they do not have any operational phone numbers. An e-mail address is required, so I used "alec@dotregistrar.mydoman.com" (I have configured my mail server to allow me to create these types of addresses on-the-fly). I never heard back from them, but to date I have recieved over 100 spam to that very same address!
Their AUP does state:
There is no information about data collected as part of a complaint, so I guess I was supposed to assume that. Any other dotregistrar stories? Did I "opt-in"?According to the daily camera columnist he contacted Scott on Jan. 30th using this number: (303) 550-9828
Read the article. Case in point was Iraq trading cards. He sent out 15 million emails, received 40,000 purchases. That's 1:375. Better than I would have thought. That's also $5.06 profit per transaction, which means he grossed $202,400, and I'll bet his net take wasn't much lower than the gross (what's the overhead for a spammer? Virtually nil, I would imagine.)
"Teachers leave us kids alone
Death penalty doesn't take away the problem, but only the symptom.
What you say is true, and I am glad I live in a civilised country where we no longer regularly murder^Wexecute people on the off-chance that we might have got the right person, in the case of spammers I'm prepared to make an exception.
The problem is the association of "fast-growing" with "good". Yes, cancers that are fast-growing could be considered successful, but I don't think one would call them good. They are parasitic, and aggressively self-centered, to the point of destroying the organism within which they reside...just like spammers. "Fast-growing" isn't good if by doing so you kill what you rely on - it is unsustainable and can only end badly.
Of course, this is a spammer here - he has operated in the criminal realm, taking what he did not earn and contributing nothing, kind of like a lamprey (and about as slimy). Forethought isn't a useful concept - in his mind, there will always be one more victim, one more fish to suck the life from. As long as he doesn't need to work, or create value, he's at home. If we're fortunate, that home will be a prison in NY, making license plates.
I'm in the UK and I just wasted 5 seconds of thier time going "um" and apologising.
Call him collect.
Repeatedly.
And tell him he can opt out at any time, but it will take two weeks to process his request, during which time he may still receive your valuable announcements.
So I called and found him on the corporate directory (press # then spell out Richter) and got him directly. No secretary or anything. At first he played very stupid (which was quite convincing for some odd reason) and then after I pointed him to the article ("uh what's slashdot?") his story started to change. The parting shot before I got tired of listening to his ever-changing stories and justifications was "well, I'm making a shitload of money doing this." Obviously we have someone who is very un-apologetic about his behavior and someone who needs to be introduced to slashdot. Let's introduce him, shall we?
You can usually reverse-resolve a phone number through google like this.
Have 500 people, who are defined as ISPs, who received his spam, file a lawsuit against him for $10,000 each.
Let the magic of numbers work against him.
Fight Spammers!
most of the weight is from oding on penis enlarger pills that just happened to work...or so the spam told me.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
A little ironic, don't you think. A little too ironic, yeah I really do think.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Don't forget to fake your return e-mail address. There is nothing like a faked return address to show that you are serious about contacting someone. Might I suggest yourname@optinbig's IP address?
The ______ Agenda
In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penisses, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.
SPAMmers must die ;-).
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
OPTINREALBIG.COM
1333 W 120TH AVE #101 WESTMINSTER CO 80234 (303)464-8164
I ran up my long distance bill up rather high that month, even at night :-)
1888 Franklin St.
But Spitzer's lawsuit claims that there were ample reasons for consumer complaints. Microsoft had set up spam traps on its Hotmail service, e-mail accounts created for the sole purpose of collecting bulk mailings. How these accounts "opted in" for Synergy6's offers isn't clear, but in a one-month period, the traps snagged 8,779 messages from the campaign. Most of the messages contained false sender identities -- claiming, in many cases, that the sender was the recipient's user name or a major online company such as AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail.
Richter says that Spitzer has yet to produce one piece of fraudulent mail sent out by OptInRealBig. Technically, he hasn't even produced an aggrieved mail recipient -- a live one, anyway. Although the lawsuit estimates that 5 percent of the recipients of the Synergy6 campaign were New York residents, the $20 million figure sought in the suit is based on the spam-trap examples of fraud. "Those aren't New York residents," Richter notes. "They're going to have to produce 8,000 New Yorkers."
AOL is incorporated within Virginia and Virginia Code (law) views falsifying ANY header information as identity fraud and falls within the felony category. Mr. Richter, as a felony on probation, I don't think you want to go there. Unless you want to visiting your two other colleagues on the Spamhaus list.
The preferred method involves two gas tankers and a flamethrower.
I don't know if this will work but how about posting
email adresses for the spammers spiders to find
For example:
uce@ftc.gov (Use this adress to report spam)
webmaster@bsa.org (Let microsofts pals have some fun)
president@whitehouse.gov (Why not)
vice.president@whitehouse.gov
Hope fully posting adresses like these will reduce the number of spammers or at least make them work a little bit harder.
Scott Richter... "I didn't know anything about computers," he says now. "All I knew was how to log into AOL. That's still about all I can do."
Someone wanna do a black op to uninstall AOL from his computer and save us all a lot of grief?
Now if we could only get AOL to stop sending him discs, we could cross another spammer off the list for good.
... what is the primary motivation of different crusaders - from Jerry Falwell till Ralph Nader ;-).
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
in my Mecury Mail rule file.
That doesn't block the senders e-mail address but rather the links that spammers use. Spammers use countless IPs and countless forged e-mail addresses to send spams that all point to the same domain so it's a highly effective means to block large amounts of spam. You also can't obfuscate a link thanks to HTML standards. And since only spammers use those domains there's 0% collateral damage. Unless someone is foolish enough to buy one of the blocked domains that doesn't intend to use it for spam.
The other benefit is that a new IP is free from the ISP or from that open proxy. Domains cost money. By filtering out those domains I've basically cost spammers a thousand bucks or so because all those domains are now useless to advertise to my e-mail accounts. The more domains they buy to try to spam me with the more money they waste.
I also have a simple catch-all written in VB to bait spam with on my home connection which saves me money on bandwidth since I can preemptively filter domains on my real server.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
CT
NY
MA
apparently, putting sex offenders and deadbeat dads in the stocks isn't easy with long hair, an unwaxed head, non-perfect teeth and a suit that costs less than three grand.
of course, it's a different game once you get down into NJ. That dude looks like Herbert Kornfeld.
H3b@l pr0z@k can help you with your rage problem.
"Hebal Prozac?" What, is that only available in Israel?
Why do you call it "the nation's fastest-growing online marketing company"?
They use spammer tactics, promote spammer products, tell you that their mailings are perfectly legal... So what are they?
Repeat after me: "THEY ARE SPAMMERS"!
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
From the parent's article:
(303) 550-9828
Apparently the guy answers this one. article here
Colorado Divorce Detail
County EL PASO
Petitioner RICHTER, KATHRYN K
Respondent RICHTER, SCOTT A
Date 11/04/2003
Docket # 001010
Decree Type Separation
Oh just for fun, one of Richter's outfits is CPAempire. Check out the parody site at SPAMempire. ;)
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
What people don't understand is that the Internet isn't free. I make my money by signing you up at my Web site, getting your information, and using that information to figure out what you like."
If Microsoft and headline-grabbing state officials are after him, he argues, it's only because he's so good at what he does, so effective, so...big.
Well, I make money by clubbing you over your head, stealing your wallet, and selling your personally identifying information to Russian mobsters.
You understand, it's just business. And I'm just good at what I do, and I do it big, big, BIG!
The ______ Agenda
He's fatally allergic to Spell Checkers.
Article Text:
From westword.com
Originally published by Westword Jan 29, 2004
(C)2004 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.
Mr. Spam Man
Microsoft wants to shut him down. New York's attorney general wants to see him in court. But Scott Richter keeps thinking big.
BY ALAN PRENDERGAST
John Johnston
Scott Richter
Stephen Chernin/Getty Images
Talking trash: Microsoft attorney Brad Smith (left) watches as New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer vows to delete Scott Richter's profits.
Source: Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center
FWD: SCOTT, DON'T SUFFER BETWEEN PAYCHECKS! THINK BIG!
In Scott Richter's world, size matters.
Richter knows that Americans like things big. Bigger penis, bigger breasts. Big savings. Big chance to win big. Think big about the bigness people crave, and big profits could be yours.
Richter is a big fellow himself, 240 pounds or so packed on a 6' 1" frame. He used to be bigger, before he got into big-time weight loss. But these days, it's his business that'sreally big. His e-mail marketing company, OptInRealBig, controls a host of like-minded domain names, including SaveRealBig, RealBigCash, RealGreatGifts, RealBigHosting andLesbiansSizzle.com (lesbians, God knows, are big). At 32, Richter's already spent nearly two decades chasing the Next Big Thing -- and finding it, the past few years, in cyberspace.
Last April, as American forces marched into Baghdad, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks showed a group of reporters a mock-up of playing cards featuring the faces of Iraqi leaders sought for questioning. Right away, Richter knew this was going to be big, big, big.
The Pentagon had developed the cards as an intelligence tool, to be distributed to the troops. Richter saw them as the war souvenir the public had been waiting for. Within hours, his company was shooting out e-mails advertising the cards for sale -- more than 15 million e-mails, in fact. Richter moved 40,000 decks of the cards in a week, buying them for 89 cents each and selling them for $5.95. Yet at the time he started the blitz, he didn't have a single deck in stock. Nobody did.
"We sold them before we ever owned them," he recalls. "Wal-Mart would've taken three weeks to get them in. We knew we could find them, so we went to work."
Richter tells the story while bottle-feeding one of his five-month-old twin sons in the kitchen of his Westminster home. It's a clean, spacious, well-lit place, with a portrait of Marilyn Monroe in the foyer, three Rhodesian Ridgebacks cavorting on the back deck, and hockey trophies and a pair of giant flat-screen monitors towering over the desk in the den. It's the kind of house you'd expect a young, sober, hard-driving entrepreneur to inhabit with his young, budding family. It's also totally at odds with Richter's reputation among his enemies on the Internet, who regard him as one of the most notorious and "morally challenged" spammers in the world.
If you have an e-mail account and have ever been careless about the kind of information you scatter about while surfing the Web, chances are good that you've received mail from Richter. OptInRealBig boasts of having a list of 45 million e-mail addresses at its disposal, many with additional demographic or consumer-preference information. The company also e-mails to millions of other addresses provided by clients, who use Richter's services to hawk everything from diet pills and porn sites to vacation packages and Christmas toys. OptInRealBig sends out between 50 million and 250 million e-mails a day, generating close to $2 million a month in revenues.
According to the Spamhaus Project, a British-based organization dedicated to combating the expanding swamp of unsolicited e-mail, Richter's operation ranks as the third-largest source of spam on the Internet. "OptInRealBig.com and Richter's many aliases are 'block-on-sight' domains for most of the Internet's mail systems," states the group's profile of Richter. "Due to his
I'm glad the guy's being sued, but for 9,000 emails? That's nothing. I mean, I understand that they have to zero in on something, but I find it odd that out of millions upon millions of bizzarely spelled pitches for useless quack herbal boner bullshit, these 9,000 emails are singled out as a high crime.
Isn't there some way to broaden the scope a little? Seems like the only message here is not to send spam to Hotmail accounts.
I have long wondered if companies in the US are sending out of country to avoid nasty legal problems, and if all the span I receive by obviously non-native english speakers originates out of the US. Think about it -- if you have servers in the US and Russia, and send the US spam from Russia and the Russian spam from the US, you are making it difficult for both countries to hastle you...
So what is the source and destination of the *majority* of spam?
A big 12" dude named tyrone ought to rape them.
The only thing missing from the "optinrealbig" site was a "Permanently remove my e-mail address" option.
Though knowing spamers it'd just generate more spam... hrmmm... spam-trap address completely unguessable, now there's an idea
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Another US chauvinist framebait modded as Funny here.
Didn't see you complaining when all the ANTI Bush / ANTI American "jokes" were modded +5,Funny on here..
I guess your belief in free speech on Slashdot carries the rider "..as long as I agree with it", huh?
1) you stated in an interview on XXXXX that you do remove email addresses when asked (ie. Opting-Out). Explain the procedure for doing so.
... what other questions would YOU like to ask.
2) In another article you said that former employees *stole* lists and destroyed data. Where did you file the suite (note: it is my understanding that these suites are in the public domain. What are there people names, and let us hear their side of the story).
The next trick is to raise his rents, as it were. Hit him with a fine when he sends illegal spam (as opposed to the legal stuff under the MAY SPAM law). Make service providers drop him for fear of being sued. And if he steps a toe out of line (like being behind MyDoom), send him to jail for a trillion years.
The real trick is to take a loaded Desert Eagle, put the barrel against his forehead and pull the trigger. That is the only way to stop spammers -- more "regulations" are just more laws for spammers to break. Added costs are just added costs for the people from whom this criminal steals resources. Only death will stop him, and it will serve as a warning to others.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
in the interview he stated that he will remove someone from (all?) lists if asked. So, tell us how this is done! I do not want to keep receiving your CRAP!!! your penis enlargment pills, your breast enlargement pills, your weight loss pills, your...
Also, if I can request to be removed, can my ISP? Hey MS/Hotmail/YAHOO/... get on the band wagon and force him to remove the names from ALL your clientel (as their legal representative)...
I've asked you about this before, but got no answer.
Clever signature text goes here.
The new CAN-SPAM approved label for permitted commercial email?
So what do you propose to do with the monsters that are running around in society? There are plenty of people in the US that have been convicted of several murders at different times that are out on the streets that should have been put down like a rabid dog.
The penalty for anti-socal behavoior 500 years ago was being kicked out of town. Now the world is so full of people, that doesn't work so we put them in jail with tends to turn bad people into worse people. There is a point where enough is enough and they need to be put down.
at some point the spammer will die, and then he won't be able to spam anymore.
if there's some justice in the world, he'll suffer from a stroke whose treatment is hindered when his spam interferes with the paramedics downloading his medical information from a medical database; while he lingers in a long, painful vegetative state, the hospital runs a continous loop of Viagra/Levitra/Cialis advertisements into the ICU.
On the other hand, spammers are like roaches (except roaches don't lie) in that there's always more to replace the ones that stop. Back to reality...
Spammers are employed third- or fourth-hand by companies who are less-than-fastidious about how they market other companies' products; they are employed far enough downstream that their (ultimate) sponsors don't have to get their hands dirty. The people who hire people like this spammer know exactly what they're getting - they don't care, because they'll get their marketing money anyway, while being insulated from the crimes they paid for. The buck is easily passed up the chain, and if caught (!), the spammer will probably walk away, while his sponsors pretend he never existed.
If I employ someone to collect protection money from businesses, I have to know that the person I've employed is a criminal of some sort. While spamming is not the same kind of crime, I know that someone willing to engage in it is likely to participate in other activities that involve the absence of a working conscience.
coldspark.com
It's absent of sarcastic comments (questioning != sarcastic, mind you), It doesn't just relate a single person story, but counter points both sides with insight and (most importantly) balance.
If only more journo's did this kind of quality stuff...*cough*slashdot*cough* ;)
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
I am now getting somewhere in the area of 40,000 spams a day to one of my servers. This system handles e-commerce for a number of small and medium-sized companies. The volume of junk e-mail has gotten so out of hand that it's bogging down my mail processes sending/receiving clients order acknowledgements and critical communication.
More than 80% of the mail my system handles is totally unsolicited. In fact, a substantive portion of it is random names @ random domains - there's no way it was ever solicited or welcome!
Now I have to build an entirely new server because F'ing assholes like this guy waste my resources and I have to handle his shit or else I'll lose my legitimate business. To say I'm furious is an understatement to the Nth degree. Any money this asshole makes is at the expense of thousands of ISPs who have to spend money and time on bandwidth and system resources. THIS GUY NEEDS TO BE IN JAIL!!!
Nope, I'm from Russia, and NOT from Iran.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
...I want to see his 95" long penis.
So check this out. I think you'll maybe find some use of a couple addresses useful in this blog. http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archi ves/001165.html
One of the (non-computer) engineering types on my mailing list sent this in:
SPAM as an energy source? Somebody hasn't thought this one out - Spam takes some amount of energy to create, so the reaction is basically endothermic. But, on the receiving end, we all know that it frequently takes considerable time and energy (expressable as watts) to get rid of it. So, at that point, it is again endothermic. So, this is following the rules of thermo, there is an unavoidable energy loss in the process. If we want to quantify the power input of a PC, divided by the amount of spam generated per unit time, we could get the energy input (input of energy in terms of creativity and potential information is taken as approaching zero). And on the output end, while it may cause increase in blood pressure and temperature, at best it is a catalyst, contributing nothing to the reaction.
Conclusion, spam is adding to the entropy of the universe - WE HAVE FOUND ANOTHER SOURCE OF GLOBAL WARMING!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not surprising, it looks like Scotty was trying to listwash the forum poster's email addresses.
Another US chauvinist framebait modded as Funny here.
Yeah, I mean who's going to argue with him that France isn't the best ally in war? A frenchman? I doubt even they would bother.
What really pains me here is that Scott Richter sounds like a great entreprenurial mind (ie: the iraqi deck of cards). Everything he worked on up until the Big* email businesses were very ingenious. And that's not to say that the business idea behind his email spamming is bad at all. It's just really unfortunate that someone with that strong of a grasp on marketing and retail resorts to marketing his products through such an unapproved and frowned upon method.
In fact, the death penalty should be modified for spammers to make sure it's slow and painful. A literal death by a thousand needle pricks might be very appropriate to the crime. Just pinch them once for every spam they sent.
...and I'm also sure that's why you're at +5, I'd like to hear your opinion on how someone raping, torturing and finally killing a child should be punished. Or Osama Bin Laden for that matter. Because then you either have some really morbid ideas, or you believe that sending a bunch of 0s and 1s over an Internet connection is the worst crime a human can commit.
A single spammer would be a slight annoyance. A million spammers is a disaster. But let's take another of Slashdot's favorite subjects, mp3 trading. A single mp3 pirate would be a slight annoyance. A million pirates is a disaster. By the same logic that lets you judge spammers by the total damage caused by spam, the RIAA should also be allowed to judge pirates by the total damage caused by piracy. Wouldn't surprise me if they went for the death penalty too.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This BMI is bullshit.
People like SCHWARZENEGGER or Travolta are considered obese by these fucked up standards.
Yes, Lye
No, because as has been documented (including this FA) only a small number of Americans are responsible for most of the spam. With file trading, there are millions of us^H^H them, so dividing the damage by the number of perps does not lead to death penalties in this case.
arsehole in the world.... he sounds like such a shifty prick. He'll get he come up'ns one day...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Too bad France was not interested in a one-of-many US wars...
Oh, wait... I think I get it... You mean that France is _supposed_ to help US in those foolish wars, right?
Ah, then you're right! France is a bad slave-country indeed! It must be punished!
Obey, France! OBEY!!!
Now, kiss my feet! That... Good country!
Taking legal action against 'Snotty' is just a waste of time. You can get rid of him but I'm pretty sure there were a quite few people who read the article and thought 'Hey, this would be a good way to make money, take over where Scott leaves off'. In fact, right now, I'm sure some spammer somewhere is sending out millions of unsolicited mail telling you how you too, for a measly $10.00, can get rich the Scott Richter way.
Plently of people have moral issues with prostitutes and prostitution, so who do the laws target, the prostitutes who are just trying to get by and make a living. But there would be no prostitutes if there were no willing customers.
SO, the point I'm really trying to make is this, if you really want to stop the spammers, sue the idiots who make it a profitible business for them. You can start with the 40 000 who bought Scott's little war souvenir cards. They made it worth Scott's while to send out the other 14 960 000 mails to people who obviously know better.
How long would the spammers be able to maintain their bulk mailing if nobody, absolutely nobody, bought a damn thing from them?
Supply and demand, that's what it is really all about.
"I'm going to worry like hell and that's not an easy job, believe me" - Lu-Tze "Thief of Time"
Following that link makes my IDS nervous:
Time, Event, Intruder, Count, Destination Port, Intruder IP
04.02.2004 09:04:32, HTTP_Favorites_Icon_Overflow, ip-66-235-245-150.sterlingnetwork.net, 1, 1160, 66.235.245.150
Looks like slashdotting them may backfire ;-).
Regards, Martin
If people would just orgnize they could easily drive him out of the country. Make it a point to protest his family at every chance. his kids school, his work, his church, his house, his job, at the gas station at any place he would go. Make his life a living hell by invading his privacy and make him a prsioner. His wife family and friend will only support him so much before they realize majority rules and his is truly scum. And I bet his community would and neighbors would rather he leave after a few months.
Just cause he makes a profit form it, doesn't make it right.
Sell crack makes a profit too.
Stop all the talk and do something.
It's about the mass effect. These guys don't just torture one person. They torture (yes, spam is torture) millions of users every day. Add up the time wasted on spam (someone on /. did) and you end up with staggering amounts of time, equalling several human lifetimes. Killing one child is bad, but in effect, spam kills dozens every year.
Anyway, you shouldn't drag down spam discussion to child rapists. You can't compare the two at all, and punishment should be decided in each case seperately. As for Osama, I'm not going there, but Osama has killed less people that George Bush Junior has. Mind you, the Iraq war was just as illegal as blowing up the WTC (and one could argue that the US Gov't is guilty of gross neglience in that case anyway).
As for the RIAA, the damage done by file sharing is at best open to discussion; either way we do live in a democracy. If 70% of people think filesharing is okay, then it ought to be legalized, no matter what a small minority of lobbyists try to shove down your throat.
Kjella, those 1's and 0's are only as good or bad as they're used for. E.g., posting pics of child rape is also just 1's and 0's, but somehow that doesn't make it as harmless as hosting a human rights site.
;)
E.g., if you're into splitting things into bits and then debating those bits, a landmine is just nitrogen, oxygen, iron, carbon, and some other equally harmless elements. Nothing you wouldn't find in soil naturally, you know. So, by that kind of warped logic, surely noone should be punished for placing a few of them on a playground. Right?
E.g., a bullet is only lead and a copper jacket. You probably get the analogy with "it's only 1's and 0's" by now.
Basically what I'm saying is: it's safe to get off that high horse now
It's not the 1's and 0's we're debating, it's the way they're used.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What people don't understand is that the Internet isn't free. I make my money by signing you up at my Web site, getting your information, and using that information to figure out what you like.
He's right - the internet isn't free, I pay my ISP for my account... Now perhaps I wouldn't complain so much about receiving spam if the money made from the spam paid for some of my bandwidth, but it doesn't... infact, the exact opposide - the spammers are effectively stealing the bandwidth that I'm paying for.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I'd like to hear your opinion on how someone raping, torturing and finally killing a child should be punished.
I don't know. I'm not a "law-system in a box". If this is a serious question, give me more details and a day or two and I will give you a well-thought-out personal opinion.
Or Osama Bin Laden for that matter.
To the best of my knowledge, he has not been actually convicted of any crime so far, has he?
or you believe that sending a bunch of 0s and 1s over an Internet connection is the worst crime a human can commit.
No, I don't. But you obviously believe that sending a bunch of guys with boxcutters to the US is.
Spotted the point? It's not what you do, its the impact you have. Raping a young girl is technically (penetration of penis into vagina) the same act as loving sex. Of course it isn't, because technicallities aren't everything. Context and impact are vastly more important.
A single spammer would be a slight annoyance. A million spammers is a disaster.
Nope. Read spamhaus - 200 spammers are responsible for 90% of the spam. Not "a million".
By the same logic that lets you judge spammers by the total damage caused by spam, the RIAA should also be allowed to judge pirates by the total damage caused by piracy. Wouldn't surprise me if they went for the death penalty too.
Me neither. But you cleverly avoided the core of my argument: Spammers damage society as a whole. Their crime is like polution: There'll be a few deaths, but overall, no major damage to any one individual. Just a bit of damage to all of us.
I fail to see how MP3 copying falls into that same category.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
OptInRealBig.com, LLC.
Domain Administrator
1333 W 120th AVE
Suite 101
Westminster, CO 80234
US
+1.3034648164
49049@whois.gkg.net
(registrant, admin, tech, and billing contact are all the same)
http://www.anywho.com/qry/wp_rl?street=W+120+Ave&c ity=WESTMINSTER&STATE=CO&whiteshark.type=a
:-)
how many other business has this guy got registered outta his house?!? thats kinda funny, maybe there is a legal lead there
#include sig.h
It was modded funny because anyone who really believes that people who annoy and inconvenience them should be put to death is a FUCKING PSYCHOPATH.
Wars have been fought and thousands been killed for less.
Unjust wars. Senseless wars. Wars that were crimes against humanity.
Don't you think that maybe (just maybe) you are blowing things a little bit out of proportion?
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Nice sermon, but I notice you're still running Windows software from those master sellers of crap, lies and snake-oil in Redmond, 'cause the game you mention is Windows only.
I guess it's like "Bob" Dobbs said: "I don't practice what I preach, because I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to."
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Instead of suing the customers, sue the guys who PAY the spammers to spam. Very few of these spamemrs are selling their own products...they're usually guns-for-hire for some website that wants to promote its product or service. So arrest the bastards.
It's against the law to hire someone to conduct an illegal activity in yout stead, you're generally charged with the same crime that person commits. (i.e. hiring a hitman gets you a nice fat murder trial) So...since states are making spamming illegal, by that logic, hiring a spammer is also illegal. This also opens up foreign website owners who employ spammers to extradition from friendly countries.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
> Where does SPAM originate? Meet Scott Richter.
1. Blocking all IP traffic to/from 69.6.0.0/18 will make some of the symptoms of this go away.
2. The 600-plus-page document compiled by the NY AG and staff was here:
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2003/dec/syn2.pd
http://www.pc-radio.com/syn2.pdf
I looked up the IP address ranges on ARIN Whois, and got the following records Wholesale Bandwidth Inc (the /18) and My Email Wizard (the /24) from Westminster, CO.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Depending on the format used by the mail, there are one or two places you can find the charset indicators. So tell your spam filters to discard anything with those charset indicators.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you send Scotty the Spammer's family to Cambodia, they'll start spamming Cambodians who get their email by motorcycle relay
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Howdy, there, troll! If your "family member" sends people email they don't want, he's wasting their time, and people will get annoyed about that. A "working opt-out link" is just a promise from a spammer to stop annoying you after you're already annoyed, but as Rule 1 says, "Spammers Always Lie", so nobody believes a promise to stop annoying you. However, if you'll post his opt-out address, I'll be happy to sign up - my email is "*.*@*.com".
Check out:
e ight_chart.html
http://www.a-guide-for-seniors.com/Pages/height_w
Did you see the picture of the guy? He's no bodybuilder.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
Of course it's too obvious a joke, that's why I'm posting as Anonymous Coward :-)
I just called him up on the number that the newspaper article claimed to get a hold of him at. He answered alright. Sounded forwarded. It rang about 3 times, changed to a different ring, then someone answered. I exclaimed "Scott!" He said "Hey! What's up?!" I then proceeded to tell him how he could obtain a larger penis. Needless to say, he hung up. Apparently Scott doesn't want a larger penis? How could you not?? Hasn't he seen his own ads, where it states that "your female lover may not be as pleased as you think she is!". It disgusts me that Scott wouldn't want to please his female lover as much as he could. What a callous bastard. Fox