Richter settles in Spitzer case

Eliot Spitzer, New York Attorney General who has lately been a man on a mission going after... seemingly everything - but recently singled out Scott Richter and said that he was going to "drive him out of business".

Well, time passes and Richter settles for $50K.

Eliot Spitzer said the marketer, Scott Richter, and his company, OptInRealBig.com, paid $40,000 in penalties and $10,000 in investigative costs under the agreement, which was signed before state Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten in Manhattan. The company also agreed to provide Spitzer's office with customer information and all advertisements it sends as well as promising to use proper identifying information when registering domain names.

If Richter makes $20K a day like some claims have said in interviews, then this $50K fee is not going to string too badly.
You could argue it is Richter admitting that he was in the wrong and taking the easy/fast/cheap way out, or you could argue that Spitzer never had a good case against him because he was doing nothing wrong in the first place.

I like to argue that I am not a big fan of frivolous lawsuits and I honestly am not entirely sure this thing was worth it.

That said, Richter still has a few more (big - meaning Microsoft) lawsuits pending against him, so we will have to wait it out to see how that goes. I wouldn't be surprised if things stop going Richter's way on these (or he starts changing his operation enough that he is more compliant, but not making the same money and slowly/quietly goes away).

Posted by Eric at July 19, 2004 08:40 PM | TrackBack