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$1 Billion Awarded in Lawsuit Against Spammers

Posted by michael on from the collecting-it-may-be-the-hard-part dept.

phoric writes "In what is believed the be the largest federal judgement in history against spammers, an ISP from eastern Iowa was awarded a $1 billion dollar judgement against three mass-mailing companies, which were said to be sending up to 10 million e-mail messages per day to the small internet provider."

3 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Guaranteed? by triclipse · · Score: 5, Informative
    Minimum due process standards require that a person be served with a summons and complaint before a default judgment - or any other kind of judgment - can be entered against a party.

    Whether they were personally served or not is a different question. However, personal service is not required. They can even be "served" with the summons and complaint by publication in a newspaper if diligent attempts at personal service have been made.

    Lack of personal service may make it easier for them to set aside the default judgment, but I doubt they will show up in court to make the proper motions.

    --
    No Inflation Taxation without Representation
  2. Who cares about the 1 billion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    according to this article http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?t=Search&doc=/ 2004/12/18/stories/local/1041776.txt
    the judge filed the summary judgement under the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (other wise known as RICO). This means anyone associated with any of these organizations, can be charge with crimes commit by another member as if they committed the crime themselves. If that's not bad enough a bunch of asset and forfeiture laws can now be used against these individuals and companies.

  3. More info in local paper (link) by SpammersAreScum · · Score: 2, Informative
    The local (Clinton, Iowa) paper had more information here. Key quote:
    CIS stated in the lawsuit that the defendants sent the spam to CIS e-mail addresses that were found on a CD-ROM titled "Bulk Mailing 4 Dummies. The court documents stated that CD-ROM included a list of more than 2.8 million e-mail addresses with the "cis.net" domain. Nearly all these addresses are fictitious, have never been assigned to a CIS subscriber and have never been used, except entered on the list included on the CD-ROM. Kramer can't be sure, but he believes the "cis" was mistakenly entered into that CD-ROM and that the creator had actually been trying to input another company's information.