Spam-fighting group Spamhaus lists Ryan Pitylak and Mark Trotter as controlling one of the world’s top five spam operations. Now the state of Texas wants to hit them where it hurts, seeking millions from the pair in a civil lawsuit filed January 13.
"Illegal spam must be stopped," said Texas attorney general Greg Abbott at a Dallas press conference announcing the suit. "Spam is one of the most aggravating and pervasive problems facing consumers today."
Pitylak and Trotter are accused of using misleading subject lines and message text misrepresentations, mostly touting fake mortgage refinancing services, on behalf of soliciting personal information that the two would turn around and sell to marketing companies for $28 per.
University of Texas student Pitylak and Trotter of California are accused of running PayPerAction LLC, Leadplex LLC, and Leadplex Inc., three companies sending millions of spam messages hawking services believed to be fraudulent. One of their attorneys, Lin Hughes, told reporters the state lawsuit had no grounds, since the companies were legitimate markets in full compliance with the federal CAN-SPAM law, and would be fought “vigorously.”
The pair got bagged when Texas and Microsoft and others teamed up to set cybertraps for their wares, e-mail accounts set up specifically to collect spam messages and track the sources. A Microsoft trap reportedly caught 24,000 such messages. An Austin resident, Dewey Coffin, reportedly set up similar e-mail traps on his own server and sent the Pitylak/Trotter spam to investigators, while a few Internet service providers and the Federal Trade Commission reportedly pitched in with the probe.
Pitylak and Trotter run the world’s fourth largest spam operation, according to Spamhaus. They set up PayPerAction three years ago, running the company under an alleged 250 false names to trick Netizens into thinking they were getting the messages from different companies, according to the Texas complaint.
