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April 03, 2005

Spam king's shaky throne

Scott Richter, the self-proclaimed king of spam who is behind OptInRealBig.com and billions of spam emails is trying to OptOutRealBig by putting the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

What with having agreed to pay $US50,000 to settle a case brought by New York's Attorney-General, and having Microsoft on his tail with a $US46 million writ for anti-spam damages, Richter is probably regretting his hubris of December 2001, when he started suing anti-spammers, and boasted that he loved their attention.

The more attention we get, the more money we make. We are going to be big. REALBIG, the name we use says it all ... we are legit and getting stronger by the day. The more people talk about us the more companies find us. COMPLAINERS=$$$$$$.

Unfortunately for him, he managed to get under the skin of one complainer, legendary anti-spammer Susan "Shiksaa" Gunn, when he published her father's personal details on the Internet.

The background to the case appears in a book called Spam Kings, by Brian McWilliams. It's a great read.

Posted by cw at April 3, 2005 10:47 AM