JDN

There was an article in the Dallas Morning Snooze today about a 22 year old student email spammer being sued by the Texas Attorney General. He has done quite well and has a black E60 parked in the front yard of his $450,000 home. The name is Pitylak. Wonder if he is a member of this forum?

Spammer Story

Rudy

Okay, I'm busted...I knew I couldn't keep the secret for too long...

(BTW, the Dallas News link requires registration -- JDN, any way for you to post a .pdf or something we can all see without jumping through all the hoops?)

JDN

Sorry. I opened it with cookies, I guess. Here's a cut and paste. Picture of car in front of supposedly $450,000 house in Austin uploaded at bottom in case it doesn't paste.


State suing student spammer
Student's lawyer denies client broke law with commercial mailings
07:07 AM CST on Friday, January 14, 2005
By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN ? Ryan Pitylak is so annoying, it's illegal.
[Click image for a larger version] ERICH SCHLEGEL/DMN
ERICH SCHLEGEL/DMN
UT student Ryan Pitylak owns this $450,000 home in Austin and drives a Jaguar.

So says Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who sued the 22-year-old University of Texas philosophy major for sending hundreds of thousands of spam e-mails offering mortgage refinancing, warranty expiration notices and debt counseling.

Mr. Pitylak built a successful business by sending misleading e-mails that snaked through spam filters and clogged e-mail in-boxes, the attorney general alleged.

"There have been reports that he made a minimum of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars," Mr. Abbott said. "This is someone who is illegally using the system to make countless dollars."

Mr. Pitylak was at a business meeting in Florida on Thursday and could not comment about the lawsuit, said his attorney, Lin Hughes. She characterized him as a successful and law-abiding young entrepreneur.

Although only 22, Mr. Pitylak has been making money with Internet ads for much of his life.

According to an archived e-mail that bears his name, Mr. Pitylak was 14 years old when he was sending e-mails to Web page operators that offered to advertise their site for $79. Mr. Pitylak, then a student in Michigan, advertised that his company, Gates Computer Systems, had a Web site that received 500 visits a day.
In-box income

In the years since, spamming has apparently provided a handsome income. Mr. Pitylak owns a renovated, olive-colored bungalow valued at $450,000 in an older but tony Austin neighborhood much like Dallas' M Streets. He drives a blue Jaguar and also had a black BMW parked in his driveway Thursday.

Although spammers thrive on anonymity, Mr. Pitylak is a well-known distributor of junk e-mail who has been identified by spam watchdog groups. His name appears on a register of known spam operators maintained by Spamhaus, a British group that tracks the biggest spammers in the world.

In July, the Chicago Tribune called him "one of the nation's most prodigious manufacturers of unsolicited commercial e-mail."

Ms. Hughes said Mr. Pitylak operated a legal Internet marketing business for several years and sold it in March to a Hong Kong company. Since then, he has worked as a consultant to the company, known as Payperaction, and continued classes at the University of Texas at Austin.
'The American dream'

Ms. Hughes compared Mr. Pitylak to Michael Dell, who dropped out of UT and founded a business that became the world's largest maker of personal computers.

"He is bright and interested and saw a way to use his talents to make some money," Ms. Hughes said. "He is fortunate enough to make it work out. That is kind of the American dream."

Payperaction made its money by finding leads for other businesses, such as mortgage companies, through e-mails. The e-mails contained links to Web pages that solicited information from people who responded.

Payperaction always disclosed that it was not the company offering the services, Ms. Hughes said, although it did so in small print at the bottom of the e-mail.

Mr. Abbott alleges that Mr. Pitylak's business misled customers by posing as a company offering services. The e-mails came with subject lines that read, "Mortgage Notice" and "Residence Loan Memorandum."

But Mr. Pitylak simply sold the customer's personal information to other businesses that, in turn, sold it as well, the lawsuit alleges.

"When you open up the e-mail and there is something different from what was advertised in the headline, that makes it a violation of both state and federal law," said Mr. Abbott, who sued Mr. Pitylak in federal court.

Texas does not have a law that calls for criminal penalties for sending spam, Mr. Abbott said.
A federal case

The attorney general alleges that Mr. Pitylak and his partners violated a federal law, known as the CAN-SPAM Act, which allows courts to fine violators $250 for each misleading e-mail. The suit also alleges violations of Texas civil statutes.

"We are going to make it very clear that spamming is a money-losing proposition," Mr. Abbott said. "We are going to take away everything we can."

Matt Yarbrough, a former federal prosecutor in Dallas, said Mr. Pitylak might have violated the law if he bombarded people with unsolicited e-mails that did not include a note saying the recipient could be taken off the distribution list. And he noted that businesses and e-mail users are eager to see action taken against the ever-growing spam problem.

"It is the bane right now of everyone's existence," Mr. Yarbrough said. "The cost of this stuff is just enormous."

Rudy

There better be about 6 times more house to the right of that photo if that's worth $450,000!

Thanks for the post JDN...

JDN

Did you catch that <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>tony</span> word?

"Mr. Pitylak owns a renovated, olive-colored bungalow valued at $450,000 in an older but tony Austin neighborhood much like Dallas' M Streets."

Rudy

I saw that but I have to admit I don't understand what it means...

Guest_BMW

When you bump into a news link that requires registration, try using

http://www.bugmenot.com/

JDN

That's understandable. Definitely not your every day terminology. I found these synonyms in a Thesaurus: elegant, fashionable, posh, expensive, well-heeled . . .

Iceman

That's understandable. Definitely not your every day terminology. I found these synonyms in a Thesaurus: elegant, fashionable, posh, expensive, well-heeled . . .
[/quote]
= expensive