AOL Digs Up Yard for Spam Gold

Registered Coward v2 writes "AOL is planning to dig in a MA couple's yard looking for buried gold and platinum owned by a spammer they successfully sued for spamming AOL. AOL said Tuesday it intends to search for gold and platinum bars the company suspects are hidden near the home of Davis Wolfgang Hawke's parents on two acres in Medfield, Massachusetts. The family said it will fight in court to oppose AOL's plans."

Comments

Nothing to hide?

[eddy]

I know this will sound like a stupid "If you've got nothing to hide...", but really, if there weren't anything hidden out there, and AOL could be made sure to fix any damage the do (grass, trees, etc).. why would you fight this? Wouldn't it simply be AMUSING to watch them flail blindly?

Oh well

[Billosaur]

Greenbaum said her husband and father intend to challenge AOL's plans to dig on the family's property and search the family's 3,000-square-foot home. She said AOL's lawyer notified the family that the company intends to use bulldozers and geological teams to hunt for gold and platinum on their property.

AOL said it will try to accommodate Hawke's parents by not being too obtrusive.

As if bulldozers weren't obtrusive when they're tearing up your yard?

Is it possible for AOL to do anything even more stupid? Are they trying to set a record for stuipd things in a month? Never have the mighty fallen so far.

property records, googlemaps, metal detector...

[anticypher]

Yes, this is the type of criminal that is hard to pin down. He hasn't been convicted of a criminal offence, he just lost a civil case for scamming. He was smart enough to convert much of his ill gotten gains into easily hidden and transported precious metals, he never drove a flashy car or bought property which could be seized. He analyzed the risks and knew that the worst that could happen to him was forfeiture of his gains in a civil trial, so he purposefully worked to hide those gains.

Assuming he was smart, he has already moved some of the gold to another country and is living outside the US. What he buried on his parents property was safe for a while, and he could always return and dig it up as needed. What he didn't count on was AOL's private investigators finding his receipts for gold bars, which gave them a lead to how he hid his wealth.

Now AOL is trying to force his hand. If a large portion of the gold remains on his parent's property, he'll need to return and dig it up before AOL gets a court order. Presumably the property is under surveillance by private detectives who will get a share if they can detect exactly where the stash is hidden and give the courts precise information allowing a less costly recovery. AOL probably doesn't care much about getting the money for themselves as denying the spammer access to it. It sends a message to other spammers that no matter how hard they try to hide their wealth, AOL and the courts will eventually recover it.

It should be entertaining to see how many treasure hunters find his parent's property and start prospecting in the middle of the night. I'd expect after national news coverage like this, tonight there will be several new holes dug in his parents property, and within weeks most of the property will have been scanned by 'passers-by' who just happened to have a sensitive metal detector while taking a short cut from A to B. If AOL doesn't get in there soon, the gold will certainly be gone, either the parents know where it is and will recover it, the scammer will return some night to get it, or a treasure hunter will eventually get lucky.

I'm on the wrong continent, so I'll just sit back and wait for the first /.ers to post exact details of the parents property and .kmz files of the property in question. It shouldn't take long now.

the AC
US$600,000 per month!?! Damn, I'm in the wrong line of work. Curse my parents for raising me with a sense of morality