What Good has the CAN-SPAM Act Done? - Phoenix Avatar
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Phoenix Avatar is a homegrown operation; they’re based in Detroit, and they tap into the overweight-and-desperate market by selling bogus diet patches for $60.00. They also engage in spoofing -- that is, they use “innocent third-party e-mail addresses in the ‘reply-to’ or ‘from’ fields of their spam... When spam was undeliverable and bounced back, tens of thousands of undeliverable e-mails bounced to unwitting third parties, sometimes getting the third parties mislabeled as spammers, themselves,” to quote from the FTC’s press release. Spoofing is just one of the practices that Phoenix Avatar engages in that have been outlawed by the CAN-SPAM act; they also do not offer an opt-out option.
You will no doubt be as delighted as I was to hear that US District Court Judge James F. Holderman placed a restraining order on Phoenix Avatar, requiring an end to illegal spamming and deceptive product claims and -- better yet -- freezing their assets. With Phoenix Avatar making an estimated $100,000 per month from the sales of these fraudulent products, that ought to hit them where they live!
Speaking of hitting them where they live, two of the principals of Phoenix Avatar were arrested, charged with violations of the federal mail fraud laws in addition to their violations of the CAN-SPAM Act. At last report, two other arrest warrants are still outstanding. Let’s hope they don’t try to raise money for their own and their partners’ defense by sending out more spam e-mail.
One would expect Global Web Promotions to be more difficult to reach, even with the so-called long arm of the law. They’re based in Australia, not in the US, even though they send huge amounts of spam over here. They not only sell their own bogus diet patch but also “human growth hormone” products said to “maintain [a user’s] appearance and current biological age for the next 10 to 20 years.” These products are shipped to consumers from within the US.
This group of spammers engaged in outrageous spoofing, among other practices, to the point of disrupting the normal operations of innocent businesses. (Okay, so maybe AOL and Microsoft Network aren’t exactly innocent, but they’re not, in this case, guilty of spamming.)
But what can the FTC do in the case of a non-US business? In this case, the commission can still charge the principals -- Michael John Anthony Van Essen and Lance Thomas Atkinson -- with violations of the CAN-SPAM Act, and file a motion requesting a restraining order. The FTC is working with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the New Zealand Commerce Commission on this matter, so maybe we will see more action in due time.
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