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Spammer Profile: Scott Richter

Posted by michael on from the call-as-often-as-you-like-no-minimum-purchase dept.

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."

14 of 438 comments (clear)

  1. He's #4 by rossz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spamhaus.org rates him as the nation's (world's?) #4 spammer.

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    -- Will program for bandwidth
  2. This guy sounds like a real prize by LochNess · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the article:
    "And Richter now finds himself in a media spotlight at a time when he's coming off probation from a felony conviction arising from a fencing investigation two years ago -- a subject he's not at all eager to talk about.".
  3. Free Advertising by Squeebee · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Spam time! by nocomment · · Score: 5, Informative

    According the Contact Us page, it's info@optinbig.com.
    Hey Andy! you take requests? http://www.optinbig.com/ unkay?

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    /* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
    /* http://allyourbasearebelongto.us */
  5. Contact Info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Contact Info by darksoulz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Dont forget his home address. Being a resident of the Denver area, I've been tempted to drive by and let him know exactly what I think of his "marketing".

  6. Re:Will this last very long? by pyros · · Score: 5, Informative
    I am surprised that mass emailing is still profitable in America, with its restrictive new laws against spam.

    Your misconception is that the new federal law (which replaces all state laws, some of which had real teeth to them) is restrictive. The irony in the law being named CANSPAM, and it really is named CANSPAM, is not to be understated here. The law says that UCE must be labeled as such, but leaves it up to the sender to define how it is labeled.

  7. more information by cluge · · Score: 5, Informative
    This article misses a few key points that are summed up nicely here (requires a click to accept policy and then REFOLLOW the link) The SpamHaus information includes not only a brief description of his transgressions, but addresses from his domain registry etc. The one thing to remember about this person is that he has been dilligently obeying the first rule of spammers for years.

    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.
  8. PHONE NUMBER!! SPAM TIME!! :D by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!!

    1. Re:PHONE NUMBER!! SPAM TIME!! :D by Coward,+Anonymous · · Score: 4, Informative

      Can someone please verify this?

      Verification

  9. Wrong. by schon · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  10. Re:New business? by spood · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you had RTFA, you would realize that the 9000 were collected by Hotmail's "spam traps", created for the sole purpose of collecting spam. Further, these 9000 were all part of the same campaign with fraudulent headers. The 9000 represent only a fraction of e-mail sent to Hotmail addresses as part of the campaign, but since the spam trap addresses could never have legitimately opted in, they are the smoking gun in the lawsuit against 'Snotty'.

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    ---- Just another spud server.
  11. Proof that spam works (sadly enough) by Nept · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.)

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    "Teachers leave us kids alone ..." - Roger Waters, Pink Floyd
  12. Re:OK by gid13 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Following the daily camera link on that search yields an article that claims Mr. Richter himself answered this number: (303) 550-9828

    (article is at this URL):
    http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/opinion_colu mnists/ article/0,1713,BDC_2490_2615380,00.html