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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."
23473437 Gold
23473437 Platinum
23473437 Me too!!!!11!!!one!!
23473437 Gold Rush
23473437 Pirates
23473437 Pirates -Caribbean
23473437 Plunder
23473437 Spam
23473437 Spam Gold
23473437 how to stop spam
23473437 gold in Mrs Wolfgang Hawkes' backyard
23473437 gold in Mrs Wolfgang Hawkes' frontyard
23473437 gold in Mrs Wolfgang Hawkes' land
23473437 gold in Medfield fields
23473437 court fight
23473437 lawyers
23473437 lawyers -sco
23473437 how to kill your wife
23473437 how to kill customers
23473437 poop
liqbase
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?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Why would AOL dig the yard seaching for treasure? Couln't they just request to pay money for the damage?
"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."
I think it's a little bit of an overkill. If the article is true, the man just used shovels to hide the gold. Sounds like the ol' Gold Rush to me.
"AOL said it will try to accommodate Hawke's parents by not being too obtrusive."
lol
man i don't know who to side against on this one, can't we rework this article to be like "innocent spam victim plans to take money back from evil spammer" or "AOL sues internet worker and destroys lawn looking for gold" man when the media isn't making it clear of what my opinion should be they're obviously not doing their job right
Does the date on that page say April 1st? This has got to be the best non-April 1st April Fool's story I've ever seen.
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.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
And even if AOL lose they've marked the spot with a big X. There are going to be plenty of people believing that there is gold hidden on the property and they'll all be sneaking around and digging holes hoping to get a piece of the treasure. It'll be worse than an invasion of moles (or whatever the local burrowing creatures are.)
No matter what it looks like, there isn't a
Shiver me timbers! Mateys, now on to digging for the hidden pirate's treasure!
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
... isn't there a way that they could use a helicopter equipped with metal detection devices to determine if anything is buried on the property without actually digging? (I'm pretty sure I saw this on a Law & Order: Criminal Intent once).
I would assume that a non-intrusive "search" of the property would at least be a middle ground between the two sides.
Hagrin.com
No matter how irritating spam is, does it really deserve such extreme aggressive measures to punish the guilty?
Perhaps those who agree with this are also the ones who agree that the RIAA are right to sue file sharers, but if not, isn't there a certain amount of hypocrisy here?
AOL move from data mining to actual mining
Is AOL really that strapped for money? To the point that they have to go digging it up? :)
AOL will not offer to pay for damages caused. However they will give them a one time discount of 50% on an AOL Broadband Platinum account for the first 3 months (Subject to a 12 month contract, standard terms, conditions and fair usage policy apply)
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
OK, you're AOL management, you've successfully sued a spammer and discover he's hidden all his "hard earned" assets as gold and platinum bars somewhere. If you had the opportunity, wouldn't you be out there with shovels helping to dig the place up? I know I would.
What they should do is offer a 10% fee for finding the treasure.
Deleted
As you may have heard AOL is currently in the process of gold and platinum extraction from the lands of the Golde's estate.
We hear at Shark, Shark and Partners represent the Golde's estate. The estate firmly believe that the gold and platinum belong to people/s that have been victims of spam. Certainly not AOL.
with that in mind the estate would like to invite the public to be in a "treasure hunt". Unfortunately, due to obvious reasons, this cannot be open to all publics.
Hence we have selested a lucky few to be in the treasure hunt.
Only 400 has been invited.
Please reply to this e-mail to accept.
A processing fee of 20'000 will be required from each participant.
Yours truly.
Darl M.
P.s.. It's very sunny here in Chad. Hope to be vacationing with you next year here.
P.s.. A processing fee of 20'000 will be required from each participant. We are sure this ceratinly will be a drop
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Not if I get there first.
**grabs shovel**
Am I the only person here who read the story and thought "Did I get up in a parrallel timeline today?" It is the most random thing ive ever seen. ISP's digging spammers gardens up to look for buried treasure? Watch out AOL, Im sure a producer will be on you to make a movie out of this. You just cant make this sort of stuff up.
He converted it all to gold... Which isn't such a bad idea the way the dollar is devaluing. Then he disappeared, presumably to come back and get it when AOL have given up.
People are creatures of habit and familiarity, he's probably hidden it somewhere he's familiar with and is fairly sure it's unlikely to be disturbed. Places he's visited regularly, holidayed, relatives etc. The more often he's been there the greater the familiarity and the greater the chance he's hidden it there. AOL are going after the logical first target.
Deleted
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.
/.ers to post exact details of the parents property and .kmz files of the property in question. It shouldn't take long now.
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
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
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
You can't make this shit up...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Archaeologists have plenty of equipment that would detect where the soil has been disturbed in the last few years and identify possible sites. I even got to try one out back in the 60s, and I am sure the state of the art is much advanced since then. My guess is that this is just AOL repeating the shock and awe tactics that have recently worked so well in Iraq and Lebanon - do not resist us or we will wreck your lives to the maximum extent.
Pining for the fjords
So I posted downthread about how I was going to sit back and wait for /.ers and treasure hunters to start posting .kmz files of the parent's property, and digging holes in the middle of the night. Then I went and looked at a few of the treasure hunter sites to see if they are ahead of /. in getting to the story first, and what did I find?
AOL has a new contest out called Gold Rush that started a few days ago. http://goldrush.aol.com/ (warning, flash, sound, possibly NSFW, datamining)
Its an advertising gimick to get people to watch AOL-TimeWarner TV shows in order to obtain clues embedded in the shows or commercials. The more confirmed personally identifying information you give them, the more clues they'll email to you. A spamme^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hn online marketer's dream database, also known as a suckers list.
The timing of this announcement strikes me as strange. Coincidence? I think not!
Maybe they need to get this spammer's gold for the prize
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Dear Sir,
This is Davis Wolfgang Hawke, an ex-spammer that lost a $12 million lawsuit from AOL, who are going to seize my $6 million in gold and platinum bars that I've hidden in the area of Boston, MA.
I need to recover the gold bars as soon as possible, before the AOL investigators get a chance to dig them up, however, I am unable to come back to US in fear of being arrested.
To this end, I'm seeking your cooperation. I'm willing to provide you with 10% share of the fortune, which is $600,000 dollars (sig hundred thousand dollars) in gold and platinum bars. Please, this business is extremely urgent and I will need your cooperation soon. I know you are a honest person, because I found your name in one of my extensively verified spam-lists, and I would like to conduct this business with you. You can remain confident that this business is completely safe as there is no risk for you whatsoever, only gains to be made. If you are willing to make this business with me, contact me at grep_shmep_20143@yahoo.com.
Best Regards,
Davis
;-)
I live and currently am typing this in Medfield and I have to say that this is one of the biggest things to happen to this town since Disney started using the name in all of his movies... Wiki page on medfield There's only about 12,000 people in the town and I know exactly where that house is which kinda makes me want to take a walk with a shovel this weekend...
It's Nazi Gold.
The sweetest loot of all.
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
1) Declare Hunting Season open
2) Invite Dick Cheney
3) Invite AOL to come dig
4) Make commemorative buttons
5) Profit - Earn more than buried treasure is worth
(ducks)
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Two questions:
1) Haven't these people heard of a metal detector?
2) Now that this is public, have the authorities or AOL taken steps to stop random people sneaking onto this poor family's property in the dead of night to do a little digging?
...if they dug up my back garden, they'd find 5 years worth of unsolicited ISP CDs they used to send me - oh, let's call them spam for the sake of argument - and bloody annoying they were too!
[AOL]: Level 60 Undead Rogue - Hawke's Mom's Backyard
:)
I always figured AOL for a Tauren myself. Big, slow-moving, funny looking, and not a whole lot of INT.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Just before I had enough floppy discs to do anything fun with, they switched to CDs.
I could just see it at a board meeting. AOL Is trying to find a revenu source. Some young guy goes well we could go looking for burried treasure. Then the managers stop and think about it walk out the room and in 5 minutes come back in with Patches on their eyes and Pirate hats, and yell "Arr Maty Treature!"
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Oh the irony ---> http://diggforlife.blogspot.com/2006/08/aol-busted -for-spamming-digg.html
Think of all the free vacations this family is being offered to get them "out of the house" so to speak.
(Found here)
Just make sure you tell them that you think the bars are buried under those big rocks you've been wanting to remove from the garden
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
True, but assuming AOL gets permission from a court to search the area, they really have no motivation to be less destructive than they're allowed to be. If they can demonstrate to a judge that there's reasonable cause to believe that the couple are protecting a cache of misbegotten goods, and one of their goals is also to make a point to the world/public about spamming and how it's not a good thing to do, then it would make sense that they would try and argue for the most destructive method of searching available.
I'd say that the best way to do it would be to go in there with heavy equipment, and just run all the dirt on the property down to a depth of about six feet or so through a sifter. It's probably reasonably cheap from AOL's perspective (all you need is a backhoe and a separator/sifter -- that's probably not the right term for it, but you've probably seen the machines that do this), and it creates a nice TV image if what you want to show is a spammer/family-of-spammer getting their lives trashed.
A whole lot of people out there really hate spammers; it's one of those things that pretty much everybody hates and has to deal with, and the idea that people who profited (potentially) from spam are getting their lives turned upside down isn't necessarily a bad PR move. Of course, it could easily backfire if the people in question can portray themselves as the victims, but if they're sufficiently uncharismatic, don't think for a moment that the American public won't be beside themselves with glee seeing their lawn get trashed. Public opinion in this country has a bit of a vengeful streak -- there's nothing we like better than seeing karma come around and bite someone in the ass.
All depends on who can make themselves look like the good guy.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They only got half the medalion! The staff was too long. They're digging in the wrong place!
Apprently the parent poster is a reposting troll. original post
You just got troll'd!
Was it gold and platinum, or is that some kind of error and it's really gold-pressed latinum? I'd imagine it's actually the latter, as that's the twelfth spammer rule of acquisition.
I really don't get all the talk about victims here ... these people are as bad as the spammers, they actually _bought_ junk from the spammers (ie. encouraging the trade).
If there's any question about where that $12m should go, how about all of us who're not simple enough to buy junk from spam and actually were victims to Wolfe's unsolicited emailing???
There's gold in them there spam!
In 1978, a made-for-TV adaptation of "The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank," by Erma Bombeck. Carol Burnett played the narrator, who is a housewife whose family has been battling the perils of suburbia, including the perfect lawn.
I remember the very ending, where their doorbell rings, and their landlord tells them, "Congratulations! We just found out that your septic tank is not up to code, so we'll have to install a brand new one for you!" The family members shout with dismay, until the father calms them down and says, "I don't care what they say, they are not digging up our front yard."
The next scene shows a backhoe proceeding to rip a huge chunk out of a nicely-kept lawn, with the family members watching disconsolately, as the end credit start rolling while the backhoe keeps digging.
At the very, very end, the screen goes black, and you hear a voice:
"I'm sorry, sir, I could've sworn that the septic tank was in the front yard!"
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
The new smash hit remix from Kanye West and Jamie Foxx
http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=kgb.txt
The phone rings at KGB headquarters.
"Hello?"
"Hello, is this KGB?"
"Yes. What do you want?"
"I'm calling to report my neighbor Yankel Rabinovitz as an enemy of the
State. He is hiding undeclared diamonds in his firewood."
"This will be noted."
Next day, the KGB goons come over to Rabinovitz's house. They search
the shed where the firewood is kept, break every piece of wood, find no
diamonds, swear at Yankel Rabinovitz and leave.
The phone rings at Rabinovitz's house.
"Hello, Yankel! Did the KGB come?"
"Yes."
"Did they chop your firewood?"
"Yes, they did."
"Okay, now it's your turn to call. I need my vegetable patch plowed."
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
You know, when I saw this headline, I thought it was metaphorical.
I have a vauge memory of a story where AOL was going "fight spam" by disallowing any bulk mail to come to their subscribers unless the sender paid AOL a fee. I thought this is what the headline was referring to-- that AOL was "digging up [it's own] yard" (i.e. pissing off it's customers by blocking legitimate newsletters, while letting spammers through if they paid) for "spam[mers] gold" (the gate-fee paid by bulk e-mailers.)
I didn't even consider the possibility that the headline was literal, until I read the write-up...
...when all they find is a bunch of Gold and Platinum AOL CDs...
I bet the Gold and Platinum wasn't precious metals... he probably spent the money on a Gold digging Platinum Blonde and of course plenty of V1agra, so sorry AOL the money is long gone, re-spent on Vera Wang, Plastic Surgery and Facials at the local Spa....
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
You sank my spammership!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If I knew that AOL was coming with bulldozers to dig in my yard, I would go out and get a couple hundred ingots of iron and bury them around my yard at random. Maybe also buy a few junk cars and park them around the yard.
-Matt
Really, I always saw them as a grue; they wait, in the darkness, and, when you can't even see the ground in front of you, they attack without mercy...
On a completely unrelated note, I love the new comment browsing system.
How to enable garbage collection on a system without protected memory: #define malloc() ((void *) rand())
Greenbaum said her husband and father intend to challenge AOL's plans to dig on the family's property...
Hmmm, husband AND father? This doesn't sound like MA to me. Perhaps an embedded clue to where the treasure is really buried -- Kentucky!
"Greenbaum said the family believes Hawke buried gold in the White Mountains 130 miles north of Boston."
A clue! Buried treasure up in the White Mountains! There is going to be some serious treasure hunting going on up there...
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Radar survey can take a couple of months, but it wouldn't be destructive, only annoying.
And, if AOL wants to dig the parents' farm, they certainly have some evidence that the guy bought gold and platinum and at least some hearsay that the guy planted it there. They may even know approximately where; so, no, the only reason to fight this is that the money is there.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
You just can't make this stuff up.
Stories like this prove that fact is WAY funnier than fiction.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
metal detecting that high up would require an electromagnetic field strong enough - guess what would happen if you tried using such a powerful EM field from that high up to scan for buried metals? Any CRT TV, computer, hell possibly even car, would get nicely fucked up.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Maybe they're trying to beat out Sony this month.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
...for nomoreaolcds.com to get rid of a huge bunch of AOL-Platinum-Membership- and AOL-Gold-Membership-CDs.
Just offer that poor family for a nominal fee of only $1M to bury their (at this point) 399176 AOL-CDs and wait for the big fun.
Buried loot in the yarrrrrrrd!
...yarrrrrrrrrrrrd!
Would be if AOL managed to dig up a massive cache of AOL floppies and CDs instead.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I think people should send the family all those AOL Gold and Platinum spam cds they used to send out to bury all over their backyard for a laugh.
Once they dig up the site they'll find an unstoppable cache of discarded Free Internet with AOL -CDs, anyway.. ;)
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Even if AOL finds gold, don't they have to PROVE it is the specific gold they were looking for and not some other gold?
gold and platinum bars
Is anyone curious at all as to where he even got them? I mean it's not like you can go to your local bank or Wal-Mart and get them. What'd he do, break into Ft. Knox?
The dude was a Neo-Nazi for christ's sake and people here are acting like he's the poor victim of the evil corporate empire. Give me a break. The dude is a slimeball - even his girlfriend ratted him out - and is probably trying to cook up something else illegal.
Since AOL's conventional ways to battle spam were obviously lacking results, they've turned to very creative methods to fight back. But seriously, why aren't they employing better security methods? AOL has always had a problem with spam,, at least when I was a customer. Though this might make a good read, I don't see it as a way to solve the problem.
His parents could make it much more difficult and bury lots of metal crap in their yard. It would be just like using AOL to search for anything...
The part I'm missing is what evidence AOL has, that led them to the conclusion that it's in his parents' yard... As opposed to ANYWHERE ELSE ON EARTH that it could be.
In other news, AOL's head lawyer is Cartman, and he wants your "Jew gold".
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant