Slashdot Mirror
Spammer's Porsche Up For Grabs
gaurab writes "Anti-Spammers would love this. In this news piece, the BBC reports that AOL is putting up a Porsche it seized from a spammer last year in a sweepstakes. What next -- 'Spammer's House' in another sweepstakes? Is this the sign of things to come? From the story:
'Internet giant AOL has ratcheted up the war against unsolicited e-mail with a publicity-grabbing coup -- an online raffle of a spammer's seized Porsche. AOL won the car -- a $47,000 Boxster S -- as part of a court settlement against an unnamed e-mailer last year.'"
IANAL, but my roommate is. The Porsche was probably part of the liquidation of assets. If they guy didn't have enough hard cash to pay the settlement/award to AOL, AOL can then start liquidating his assets to get all the money they were awarded. I don't know who gets to choice which particular assets get "disposed" of, but I guess AOL worked with the government to just keep the Porsche as a Porsche and not convert it into cash. The spammer probably made out on the deal also, as I believe the cost of turning assets back to cash would have been charged to the spammer. So instead of converted the $40K Porcshe into $30K cash or whatever someone would have bought it for minus the cost of selling it, the spammer probably got the full 'value' out of it.