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[Asrg] Spammer case studies?

2006-03-26 18:10:44

Does anyone know of any, or preferably a collection of, case studies
of spammers' businesses with lots of hard facts?

  You can stop right there, the rest of this note just refines that
  one sentence inquiry in a tiresome manner.


I'm thinking of either something in the business school model, or
details from someone who has worked their way down to primary sources
on one or more spammers such as 1040's, perhaps seized internal
record-keeping, investigative post-mortem auditing by qualified
forensic accountants, etc.

What I don't need any more of is:

  Circumstantial evidence like: He had a fancy car when arrested, he
  must've made a lot of money off spamming!

  Articles etc which just seem to repeat other articles: According to
  the Daily Truth he was making millions off spamming. And then when I
  go look at the Daily Truth article it cites the Weekly Truth which
  cites the Monthly Truth which maybe said "he had an expensive car!"
  or similar hearsay.

  "Common sense": Why else would they do it? Duh, I dunno, how much
  was Andrea Yates paid to drown her five children in her bathtub? Why
  else would she do it? I know, macabre, but let's face it there are
  nutso people in the world, and people who play the lottery, or
  gamble the house on a sports game, etc. etc. Can't really reason
  backwards reliably.

  Put another way, such assertions justify asking the question but
  doesn't actually answer the question.

For example, the recent news about Chris "Rizler" Smith (go google the
name.) He had a lot of wealth allegedly acquired via prescription
fraud at the time of his arrest.

But reading the articles carefully seems to indicate he spammed
viciously for a while but then moved on to magazine ads and so forth.

It's not at all clear whether any significant money came from the
spamming. This is particularly suspicious in that he seems to have
given up on spamming, or at the very least aggressively branched into
other forms of advertising, long before his arrest. So how much of his
apparent wealth arose from spamming?

I've been looking through dozens and dozens of articles, papers, etc
and I've yet to come up with anything convincing to a skeptical eye.

Ralsky probably made some money from spamming but again it's not clear
how much. Was it reported to the IRS? Is it possible to see those
reports? If not, then is he being charged with tax fraud? I can't find
that.

Obviously it's all relative. Clearing, say, $100K/year might be an
enormous amount of money to trash like Ralsky. I wouldn't sneeze at
$100K/yr but I wouldn't call it "a lot of money" either, it ain't
"millions".

It also leaves open the question as to whether that money came from
profits from spamming made by him or his customers?

Or did he just hustle his customers out of that much money for
spamming services and the spamming per se never really made them any
money; his customers were victims in a sense also paying into false
hopes of non-existant returns as happens so often in shady (and even
legitimate) business schemes.

My speaking to people who actually have worked these cases indicates
the sort of people who engage in spamming and other crime tend to have
the common quality of being into instant gratification. They'll clear
$5K and run out and put it down on a fancy car before paying the rent,
that kind of thing.

Oftentimes, other than hard assets such as automobiles, they'll have
little or no liquid assets at the time of their arrest. Usually
they're financial wrecks having used a few bucks they made to just dig
themselves deeply into debt, such as downpayments on fancy cars or
security deposits and a coupla months' rent on fancy digs.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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