Out of respect to spam-court - and especially the recent news of mcproxy completely removing himself from the spam biz - I have removed the copy of the posting from that blog. Interesting that such scant information could lead to someone completely rethinking their whole method of making money.
What's even more interesting is that that old stalwart "Nick Danger" continues to press on with his harrassment and badgering of Spam-Court as an informational entity. In an email he sent to the owner of spam-court he inquires:
Would you please be so kind as to supply me with your service address; that is, that address at which you receive legal documents, notifications, subpoenas and the like? Failure on your part to provide me with such address will result in requests being forwarded to both your web host and your domain name registrar. All speed will be appreciated. Thanks. Nick Danger.
So first he commands his spammer friends to "take down" spam-court.com, then his posting gets deleted - obviously since not many on that forum supported his view - and now he continues forward with his same plans to "take down."
Digging up some background on Mr. Danger leads to some interesting details - and I could just stick to bulkerforum postings as the main ammo. The man has a habit of not caring who he sends his mail to, or how he got their email addresses, and yet constantly refers to himself as a "compliant" emailer. In the same breath he often hints that nobody would bother checking anyway, which is incorrect - as has been proven in previous CAN-SPAM lawsuits. What Mr. Danger is failing to recognize is the following:
"Compliance" means that you are using at least a double-opt-in method for acquisition of your list addresses. That rules out things like email harvesters - something he's known to use.
"Compliance" also means you can't mess with the headers of an email, something else he's obviously been doing.
He hides behind the following statement:
I do want to be as "comploiant" as possible in all respects and yes, I do have both my own non-profit and connectiuons with others.
[All spelling errors are present in his original posting]
How does having your own "non-profit" have any bearing on the fact that you still spam to a list you gathered using email harvesters? That's something that turns a normal CAN-SPAM violation into an "aggravated instance", and opens you up to other computer trespassing laws. It's also widely perceived as NON-compliant.
If you harvest my email address from anywhere - usenet newsgroups, blog postings, websites, myspace, craigslist, what have you - you are not a compliant mailer and you are violating (among numerous other things) CAN-SPAM legislation. There is solid case law on the books regarding this.
But that's only important if all we want to go after him for is whether he's a compliant mailer or not.
Nick Danger is apparently an unapologetic stock spammer, and my personal hunch is that he's behind several thousand (if not many more) stock spams for the following stock symbols:
- GDKI
- CWTD
- CHFR
- UTEV
- PSUD
Again: this is my hunch. And I have my reasons for believing so, but no factual evidence (yet.)
Why do I know he's an unrepentant and repeat stock spammer? Simple: he says so!
In a bulkerforum posting dated Jan. 21, 2007, he goes into quite a bit of detail as to how exactly one can profit from this illegal stock manipulation, even referring to the activity directly as the well-known term "pump and dump" (as always I am not editing anything in his posting):
If you want to pump-and-dump for yourself and let's face it; all stock mailing is about pump-and-dump (Sorry, gang but that IS the reality!), you get someone with a minimum of ten grand to buy the stock.
Now you don't want any overt connection to this guy, do don't use email, phone calls; meet in resturants and bars like Tony soprano meets his guys.
Above all, DO NOT TALK ON THE PHONE OR THE COMPUTER!
NO IM messaging, NO AIM, NO ICQ, etc.
Wow. That sounds totally legitimate and honest, doesn't it? But there's more:
Your front man buys the stock in his or his compny's name.
A few weeks later, you mail for that stock predicting all sorts of wonderfulness and that money will just be lying around.
You should send these emails on a Wednesday or Thursday.
Come Monday, your guy is sitting at HIS computer wataching that stock like a hawk watches a mouse in a field.
When it goes up 6-8%, which it will if you've emailed properly, he sells.
6% of 10 grand is $600.00
Well.....................................................................
You now have around $10,550.00 to work the next one.
If your guy has, let's say $50K available, you can work several of these at the same time.
Don't so it too often under the same acount though; move around your portfolio among the discount brokers so that you do not draw attention to your little "thang".
This is how it really works and it has nothing to do with these compnaies "raising capital", "funding research", etc; none of the claims made are true.
ALL stock mailing is connected to a pump-and-dump plan so let's not gild the lily and let's also face reality.
Is this legal?
Probably not.
Is it ethical?
When discussing anything connected with the stock market the terms "ethical" and "stocks" are mutually exclusive, so who cares?
Thanks.
Nick Danger.
_________________
He walks again by night.
In a previous posting from Oct., 2006, he also emphasized the need to destroy evidence:
You must keep as much paper distance between yourself and the actual stockholder as the FTC and SEC take a dim view of this practice and will put you in jail if they catch you at so use only overseas mailers, etc.
When setting up this little thingy do NOT use emails, cell phones and keep no written notes.
You can use pre-paid cell phones which are traceable to no one.
Also, you as the mailer NEVER want to actually hold any of the stock in your name or the name of any relative or close freind; you do NOT want this traced back to you!
Good luck!
This is instructive on many levels. He makes it clear that he's uncertain about the legality of this act. Well let me help him out with that: it's flatly illegal and not merely a federal offence, but an international one. You can be prosecuted not only by the US law enforcement (federal or state), but also the law enforcement in the resident country of the company whose stock you are spamming. That includes China. (Note: I'm not a lawyer, I just do my research.)
The US Securities and Exchange Commission recently suspended trading on some 35 companies' stocks due to the fact that they kept finding that the press releases and company information were, more often than not, completely fake. That's a huge no-no - and also a federally punishable offence.
As evidence of this, witness a Mr. Jeremy Jaynes, successfully prosecuted in the autumn of 2004, and currently serving a 9-year sentence for pump and dump spamming. This is not some fairy-tale land where people don't notice the stock spam that people like Nick Danger are sending out every single day. People notice. People eventually take action.
So I find it interesting that he's making noises as though he's about to serve some kind of legal notice to the owner and operator of spam-court - a public website, run privately and without any profit - when he himself has very publicly stated that he is either directly profiting from illegal activity, or certainly knows enough about it to do so.
That knowledge is further borne out by his investigation into bettering his image spamming.
Then there's this gem, showing the human side of Mr. Danger. In a posting from Sept., 2006 regarding anonymous setup of so-called "bulletproof" servers he recommends the following:
Post subject: Inhibitors OF Free Speech.......
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...are they all!
AS a bit of a Newbie, it seems to me that one must own about nine dozen domains purchased in the names of freinds, relatives, acquaintaneces, homeless people(Homeless people will do ANYTHING for a six pack or a pint of Viaka!), your cats and your dogs and just keep moving.
and later in the same posting:
Homelss people are also good straw men for bank accouts but take them to a bank far away from the alley in which they live as they will soon foget where you have taken them and do not leave them with any banking info.
You then extract the money from the account using an ATM card and the money is NOT traceable to you!
Heh, heh.
Did I say that?
This was also quoted on spam-court.com (in greatly reduced form.) That he or anyone else would fail to see any of this as an abuse is just staggering. That's an abuse of the homeless person's personal identity (such as it is), and it's also making the homeless person accessory to fraud (or whatever else his spam runs are for, but from what he's said in that forum it's largely stock manipulation.) This does nothing to raise my already very low opinion of Nick Danger.
I sincerely hope that the owner of spam-court will not take his legal overtures lying down, and will retort with something with real teeth: that Nick Danger should divulge his true identity and own up to his verifiably illegal acts, and that the court should consider his laughable "lawsuit" to be the ridiculous slapp suit that it is and have it thrown out of court.
More as it happens, obviously.
SiL
P.S. I notice that as I wrote this there has been yet another update in this proceeding. Nick Danger re-replied:
Well, I would have thought that you were right on top of legal stuff as you write on your website as though you are! Were I you, I would contact my attorney to get a definition of "service address" and I would do it quickly. In the meantime, I'll help you out a bit by telling you that I need to send you a letter and if you do not provide me with a good address to whcih to send that letter, I will be forced to send the letter along with certain other documents to both your host and and domain registrar. Perhaps we can cut those parties out of this loop if you accede to my request. Thanks,
Nick Danger.
Funny: at no point, ever, have I assumed that spam-court was in any way a legal information website, any more than I consider this blog to be one. As usual: Mr. Danger is following an incorrect assumption.
I hope that this "letter" and these "documents" feature his real name and address. So do several legal representatives I've mentioned this to. :) All kinds of interesting information could come out of that.
SiL
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