California Attorney General Granted TRO Against Spam Group Using “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”   4/18/2005 - 961 views, 2 Comments

Last week Aunty reported that California Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s office, through Deputy Attorney General Ian Sweedler, had teamed up with the FTC to nail spammers Rick Yang and Peonie Pui Ting Chen, operating out of Los Angeles as Optin Global, Inc. and Vision Media Limited Corp..

At the end of last week the California court granted Sweedler and FTC’s request for a TRO (temporary restraining order) against Yang and Chen, freezing all of their assets, and ordering them to stop spewing their spam until the Court can take a look at the issues.

Interestingly, it was not only Deputy Attorney General Ian Sweedler’s dogged determination and white-hot hatred of spam which lead to the bust, but his love of Douglas Adams’ hit, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

It seems that Sweedler wasn’t the only one related to the case who was intimately familiar with the book; Yang and Chen inserted phrases from the book into their spam (presumably in an effort to trick spam filters into letting the spam through).

Sweedler recognized the Adams phrases, and used them to trace back to the various websites registered by Yang and Chen, all paid for with the same credit card. Oops. Don’t panic.

Aunty hopes for a swift and strong conviction in this case, and is sure that as they lead Yang and Chen away, Sweedler’s parting remark will be “so long, and thanks for all the phish.”