Claiming they're exposing "an international world of bulk e-mailers," America Online and EarthLink have sued over a dozen suspected spammers and related marketing firms in five states, with AOL filing in Florida and EarthLink in Georgia, in two cases for which they first filed suit last year.
AOL sued a Florida couple and another man of working with two Americans in Thailand, routing mortgage-scam spam to AOL customers, while EarthLink sued sixteen persons and companies in Florida, California, Tennessee, and Michigan, accusing those of working a multi-state spam ring, according to the Washington Post.
The AOL suit also accuses their targets of developing a software program called Merlin to beat AOL spam filters by way of a company called Connor-Miller Software, Inc., the Post said. The EarthLink suit accuses their targets of sending over 250 million spam messages hawking herbal supplements, Viagra, and adult dating services, not to mention using stolen bank cards and other false identity documents to open EarthLink accounts used to send the spam, the paper said.
Both AOL and EarthLink filed the cases originally last year, but a federal court ruled AOL didn't show the Florida defendants caused sufficient damages in Virginia, AOL's home state, the Post said, while EarthLink amended a case they first filed last August to name the actual defendants.
In the AOL case, Charles and Heidi Miller and Jim Connor are accused of maintaining a set of computers in Florida through which spam messages were routed from Thailand by a third defendant, Jonathan Beyer, who is said to be in Thailand still but faces a separate AOL suit in the case. The Post said a series of secure instant message chats among them "show (them) swinging between hubris and fear of discovery. Often, they stab each other in the back when talking to others."
