Two spammers, including one Spamhaus considers one of the world's worst, have a tentative settlement deal with Internet service provider EarthLink, the ISP announced January 25.
"Today's announcement is the latest in a long list of legal victories that EarthLink has garnered as an advocate for consumers in the fight against spam," said EarthLink general counsel Larry Slovensky, announcing the deal with Damon DeCrescenzo and David Burstyn. EarthLink sued the men in 2004, accusing them of being part of a multi-state spam operation flushing over 250 million spam messages through EarthLink channels.
"Filing lawsuits against alleged spammers and seeking court orders that put them out of business is an important way that EarthLink helps preserve the integrity of the Internet for all users," Slovensky said.
The pair was accused of using falsified names, fake addresses, and non-existent corporate entities to disguise their identities, according to court filings in the case. They were also accused of using stolen credit cards to create Internet accounts as part of their spam operation.
DeCrescenzo and Burstyn were nicknamed the Alabama Spammers because they often enough used telephone lines in and around Birmingham for their work. DeCrescenzo had once been listed as the world's number two spammer on the Spamhaus Registry of Known Spam Operations, an image fattened when Microsoft and Amazon also sued him over his reputed spam by the daily millions, pushing cheap Viagra pills and other body part enhancements.
''Decrescenzo is one of the more serious spammers,'' Spamhaus founder Steve Lindford told a Florida newspaper last year.
One of DeCrescenzo's companies, Rockin Time Holdings, was liquidated in bankruptcy court last year. Burstyn was a co-director of the company.
EarthLink sued the pair under federal and state civil Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations laws, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the Georgia Computer Systems Protection Act.
Earlier in January, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue vowed to push legislation to make spamming a felony in his state, as it now is in Virginia.
