Four men have been indicted on charges stemming from an alleged massive spam scheme that targeted some 8 million student e-mail addresses on more than 2,000 colleges and universities, the U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this week.
Named in the indictment were brothers Amir Ahmad Shah, 28, of St. Louis, MO and Osmaan Ahmad Shah, 25 of Columbia, MO. Also indicted were Liu Guang Ming of China and Paul Zucker, 55, of Wayne, NJ.
The indictment was unsealed on April 29 upon the arrests and initial court appearances of the Shahs, the Department of Justice said.
According to U.S. officials, the Shahs developed e-mail-extraction programs that harvested more than 8 million student e-mail addresses from more than 2,000 colleges and universities. The Shahs used their database to conduct at least 31 spamming campaigns that netted more than $4.1 million selling products such as MP3 players, digital cameras, magazine subscriptions, spring break travel offers, pepper spray and teeth whiteners, according to the indictment.
The Shahs used false information in the e-mails suggesting they had an association with the university or college the student receiving the e-mail attended, according to the indictment. They also falsely claimed the products they sold were made by alumni-owned companies, the indictment said.
The Shahs created dozens of identical Web sites for each campaign—sometimes as many as 60—to divide and conceal the source of their campaigns and avoid spam filters, the indictment alleges.
Ming rented the Shahs access to 40 of his servers in China, officials claim. Zucker, who is allegedly a spammer selling his own products, partnered with the Shahs when they were leasing servers from Ming, officials claim. He allegedly bought and sold proxy servers—computer servers that allowed them to mask the origins of their messages—with the Shahs, according to the justice department.
Each of the defendants is charged with participating in a conspiracy to engage in an unlawful spam e-mail operation since Jan. 1, 2004. They are also all charged with nine counts of aiding and abetting each other to materially falsify header information, a violation of the U.S. Can Spam Act, according to the indictment.
The Shahs and are also charged with 26 counts of aiding and abetting each other to access a protected computer without authorization and transmit commercial e-mails with the intent to deceive or mislead the recipients about the origin of the messages.
The indictment calls for forfeitures of more than $4.1 million from the defendants as well as two residential properties in St. Louis and a 2001 BMW belonging to Amir Shah, and a residential property in Columbia and a 2002 Lexus sedan belonging to Osmaan Shah.
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