The Federal Trade Commission has filed its first two lawsuits under the Can Spam act against firms that have generated nearly 1 million complaints.
One defendant is Phoenix Avatar, a Detroit firm that allegedly sent unsolicited e-mail to sell bogus diet patches.
A U.S. district court judge ordered the firm to stop spamming and has frozen the defendants’ assets. In addition, federal authorities executed a criminal search warrant and at deadline were in the process of arresting four principals.
Phoenix Avatar generated nearly $100,000 a month from product sales, according to the FTC.
In the second case, the FTC sued Global Web Promotions, a spam enterprise operating out of Australia and New Zealand.
Since Jan. 1, consumers have complained to the FTC about 490,000 spam messages linked to Phoenix Avatar and 399,000 messages for Global Web Promotions.
The FTC said in its complaint that consumers who wanted to purchase Phoenix Avatar’s diet patches clicked on a link in the message and were connected to one of the firm’s many Web sites.
The defendants hoped to obscure their identities by
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