MySpace Slaps ‘Spam King’ with Lawsuit
Scott Richter, former CEO of email marketing company OptInRealBig who has also been known in the past as the “Spam King”, is being sued by MySpace under the federal CAN-SPAM Act.
MySpace claims that Richter’s current company, Media Breakaway, was able to access MySpace user accounts through identity-stealing phishing schemes and then used those accounts to spam other MySpace users with promotional offers for everything from ringtones to Polo shirts.
The amount of damages sought by MySpace has not been disclosed. In a 2005 suit filed by Microsoft and then-New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, Richter was ordered to pay $7 million after refusing to pay a $100,000 fine.
Richter filed for bankruptcy after the 2005 ruling, and later that year, his company was removed from the Registry of Known Spam Operators run by Spamhaus, a non-profit group that tracks known spammers and spam activity.
“If it takes filing a federal suit to stop someone who violates the law and damages our members’ experience, then that’s what we’ll do,” said Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace’s chief security officer in a statement. MySpace has been under the watchful eyes lately of parenting groups who fear the online service may unwittingly be a harbor for online predators. As a result, the News Corp-owned social networking leader is now taking steps by posting Amber alerts to notify its members of missing children in their communities.
[UPDATE: In response to the MySpace lawsuit and subsequent press release, Steve Richter, General Counsel to Scott Richter and Media Breakaway, LLC sent a response denying allegations made in the MySpace press release. Steven Richter states:
“Like everyone else in the industry we are only aware of what MySpace has alleged in their press release, as we have not been served. Obviously we deny the allegations made in the press release”. “Several months ago I spoke with counsel for MySpace about some complaints they received and we cooperated with them fully and were assured that if there were any outstanding issues, they would get back to us. I guess this is their way of getting back to us. He added, “I just hope that the purpose of their press release was not to distract the public and governmental attention that has been focused on MySpace recently regarding their alleged misconduct.” ]
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