America Online Inc. said last week it would raffle a 2003 Hummer H2 and nearly $100,000 worth of gold bars and cash it collected from a spammer convicted under the federal CAN-SPAM Act.
A treasure trove of high-end computer equipment also collected as part of the settlement will be donated to public schools and school systems in northern Virginia, where AOL is based, said the company.
The spam suit filed named as defendants Braden M. Bournival, Davis Wolfgang Hawke, the company Amazing Internet Products LLC, and numerous unnamed co-conspirators. Last spring a Virginia court in the spring awarded AOL $13 million in the suit, which was filed in March 2004 and was AOL's first under CAN-SPAM.
It is thought that AOL has settled with Bournival, but is still seeking Hawke and other defendants. AOL spokesman Nicholas J. Graham said the company is looking to collect $500,000 in gold bars from one of the defendants. "He's the next stop on our spammer treasure map," Graham said.
The Hummer and $85,000 in gold bars and cash will be offered as a grand prize in the AOL Spammer's Gold Sweepstakes, which started accepting entries on Wednesday 10th. During the contest, which runs until Aug. 19, AOL also plans to have a daily drawing for $1,000 in cash. The gold bullion is comprised of 33 gold bars each weighing an ounce, and nine gold coins. The gold is valued at $20,000.
AOL says that it has reduced spam on its network by an average of 60% to 70%, based on referrals from its members. When finding spam in their email boxes, AOL members can click on a "report spam" button to remove it and register it with AOL's spam filter. Referrals have fallen to between 3 million and 4 million a day from about 10 million in the summer of 2004, Graham said. At the peak in the fall of 2003, AOL was receiving as many as 20 million referrals in a day.
AOL warned spammers: "AOL will find you and sue you. And AOL will do everything it can to make sure its members end up with any money you made as a spammer." AOL's anti-spam filters are blocking more than 1.4 billion pieces of spam each day, compared to a high of 2.4 billion messages blocked in a single day in 2003.
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