An operation that spammed millions of consumers with sexually graphic e-mails to drive traffic to “lonely housewives” Web sites has been halted at the request of the Federal Trade Commission.
According to the FTC, U.S. District Court Judge Amy St. Eve ordered a temporary halt to the spamming and has frozen the assets of the outfit, pending a hearing.
The FTC alleges that the spam typically contains short messages or a picture and a hyperlink promoting the “date lonely wife” service. The agency charges that the spam violates nearly every provision of the Can-Spam Act. It contains misleading headers and deceptive subject lines; and does not contain a link to allow consumers to opt out, a valid postal address or a disclosure that it is sexually explicit.
In papers filed with the court, the FTC alleges that the operators control more than 180 Web sites that claim to be registered to people around the world. The defendants use an offshore payment processor on the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean, have foreign bank accounts to collect spam proceeds, and use a Cyprus-based company name and address to front the operation, according to the FTC.
The commission alleges that they route their spam through other people’s computers, falsify contact e-mail addresses, and obscure tools that would allow a recipient to stop or complain about the spam. The FTC further alleges that the operation is actually U.S.-based and that the defendants are trying to conceal their identities from U.S. law enforcers.
The FTC complaint — filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, in Chicago — names Cleverlink Trading Limited, Real World Media, LLC and their principles, Brian D. Muir, Jesse Goldberg, and Caleb Wolf Wickman. The defendants are based in California.
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