Boca Raton, still reigns king for spam

As we have discussed before, Florida is a spammers' heaven due to the leniant legal system, at least in terms of what possessions and/or assets you are allowed to retain after declaring bankruptcy. Because of this, Boca Raton is the home of many scam artists, and many scam artists are spammers.

Recently, the FTC has decided it is going to be suing Creaghan A. Harry for spamming and selling fake human growth hormone supplements (technically the supplements were real, but the claims of what they did were false).

An amusing part of the article:

Another friend and neighbor said that she is shocked and appalled that a man who is considered to be one of the top 10 spammers in the world has been living right next to her and her family on Bel Lido Isle in Highland Beach, in a $2.4 million dollar home that sits right on the water, since Aug. 2002.
“To think that he might have made his money to buy his home, to buy his Hummer, to buy everything he owns from people who have sent their hard-earned money to him… I just can’t even fathom it. I hope it is just a case of mistaken identity because he is such a good man,” she said.

Come on, while the guy sounds like he was a scam artist and operating illegally under different names without registering them as legal entities - it isn't like he was raping children or something.
He was selling a product and marketing it in an annoying way.
Surely that isn't all that savory, but the people in this article make it sound like they just discovered a serial killer on their block.

It should be noted that the spamming itself appears to be what drew the attention to him (via 40K complaints that he claims are from the same few people reporting it multiple times). But the reason for getting in trouble looks as if it is more due to the false claims of the product in the ads, and the fact that when you do business, it has to be in your own name if you don't legally file to do so otherwise (which it doesn't appear he has done).

If you want to make a lot of money spamming, this case shows you how - it isn't the spam in this case, but the product that costs nothing to make and sell it for a ton. The spam just gets you the bodies that buy such a thing.

There are any number of such false claiming products in any local GNC or muscle magazine, but they are going about their business in a legal and registered way. That would apparently be the main difference here.

Posted by Eric at July 31, 2004 10:50 PM | TrackBack