[SURBL-Discuss] New redirector: www.nate.com

Richard Grabowski rgrabows at pacbell.net
Fri Sep 16 20:20:27 CEST 2005


Dear David,

I am an attorney in California.  Our firm represent ISPs and have begun to
actively pursue SPAMMERS under the California fraud laws and the Federal Can
SPAM act.  I have been following yours and your colleague's messages on
[SURBL-Discuss].  Our primary problem is identifying SPAMMERS in a way that
we can start a federal action against them.  "Redirect" problems add to our
other problems of identifying SPAMMERS.  Currently we are trying to Identify
defendant's by tracking them to the retail site they represent.  We then
include the owner of the retail site, the registrar of the domain (in almost
every case this is YES NICK LTD), and any technicians we identify along the
way.  Ignore the arguments you have heard about what can and cannot be
brought under the current law - I really think this has been produced by
attorneys who are defending SPAMMERS to get ISP's and federal/State
prosecutors not to bring actions, or to set up some kind of future defense.

I am looking for any help you or your associates might be able to provide.
I realize you must be skeptical.  Therefore you can check my credentials at
the CA State Bar site (look it up on google) by doing an attorney search on
my name - Richard Grabowski.  I am located in Eureka, CA.  In addition to
being an attorney I have over 30 years experience as a technician in the IT
and Telecommunications industry.  I worked for GTE, DMR and BusinessEdge as
a senior enterprise architect.

I am looking for tools, freeware or paid, that help track domains, email
servers, senders, etc. Anything that will help identify the actual source of
the SPAM in a quick and efficient manner.  I am working with high end
technicians that have extensive experience in this area, but I am always
looking for more help.

We will bring actions against SPAMMERS in foreign countries.  We do not
actually expect them to respond to a federal complaint, so we will end up
with default judgments.  These are relatively cheap to pursue.  We will then
try to make a deal with the legal agencies in the foreign country, a
percentage, to try and recover on the judgment.  This may eventually make it
too expensive for the SPAMMERS to continue, or it may incent the local legal
agencies to actually pursue the SPAMMERS, rather than protect them.

As I have said we are actively pursuing this tactic now.  I am hoping that
you and your colleagues will want to help.  The enforcement of SPAM laws is
currently being left to the FTC and State prosecutors.  These agencies have
little or no budget to pursue these activities.  I unfortunately believe
that the laws were set up limiting enforcement primarily to the FTC in order
to prevent any real prosecutions.  This is a tactic of some politicians to
support their contributors without actually having to oppose legislation.
In this case it has made enforcement of the SPAM laws very unlikely.  The
only case I know of is a joint action by the FTC and CA State Atty Gnl.: FTC
and People of CA v. Optin Global, Inc. and Vision Media Limited, Corp.  You
can find the federal filing at:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0423172/050413comp0423172.pdf

We are using this filing as the template for our filings.

If you can help I would really like to hear from you.

Thanks,
Richard Grabowski
rgrabows at pacbell.net
W - 707 441-1487
C - 707 771-9585



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