Manchester Spammers Had Big Plans

By Brian McWilliams on Friday, March 12, 2004.

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The internet giant AOL is going after a Manchester based spam operation.

AOL is using the three month old federal law called CAN-SPAM.

The move comes just as the spammers were about to launch an even bigger venture.

NHPR's Brian McWilliams has the story â€¦

Last month, Davis Hawke told his mother that he had big plans brewing.

In an e-mail, Hawke told her that he and business partner, Manchester native Brad Bournival, were going to launch a new junk e-mail operation.

Hawke's message to his mom said the new enterprise was going to make national news.

"He's going to be getting an awful lot of publicity soon due to some new project. And he's going to be on Larry King and some other things. I don't really want to say what it is. It's not illegal, but it's big."

Hawke's mother is Peggy Greenbaum of Medfield, Massachusetts. She says her son was already in the process of restructuring Amazing Internet Products, his Manchester-based junk e-mail business.

An investigation by NHPR last summer revealed that Amazing was grossing around half a million dollars a month from sales of a male genital-enhancement product called Pinacle.

But Hawke's and Bournival's mysterious new venture was interrupted this week by a big lawsuit from America Online.

AOL announced Wednesday that it is suing them in a federal court in Virginia.

It's the big online service's first lawsuit under CAN-SPAM, Congress's solution to the junk e-mail problem.

According to some estimates, spam now makes up as much as 80 percent of all e-mail traffic.

Nicholas Graham is a spokesperson for AOL. He says the company has been investigating Hawke since last summer.

"He was spamming our members in very high volumes, and generating hundreds of thousands of complaints from members. And he was using tactics of fraud, deceit, and evasion in order to get his e-mail in front of our members' eyes."

According to AOL's complaint, Hawke and Bournival were sending their spams under false names and with bogus return addresses.

The men also used special software designed to slip messages past AOL's spam filters.

CONGRESS PASSED The CAN-SPAM act to halt such practices.

Neither Hawke Nor Bournival would agree to be interviewed about the lawsuit.

In a late-December online interview with NHPR, Bournival said he wasn't worried about the CAN-SPAM act.

He said the law actually legalizes certains types of spam.

Peggy Greenbaum says her son Davis Hawke was belatedly planning to bring his business into compliance with CAN-SPAM.

"It's not out of the kindness of his heart. He doesn't want to be sued. And he doesn't want to go to jail. So he doesn't want to break any laws."

There's been evidence in recent weeks that Hawke and Bournival are phasing out their old spam business.

They've removed their company's name and address from registration records on some 300 web sites owned by Amazing Internet.

The records now list a fictitious name and address in New York City.

But in order for their new venture to comply with the law, Hawke and Bournival would have had to stop using such tricks to hide the true source of their spams.

And that would have put them personally in the line of fire from people who hate junk e-mail.

It was apparently a risk the two men thought worth taking.

Bournival said in the online interview that he expected the new venture to earn him a million dollars a week.

Besides over two million dollars in damages, AOL wants the court to award it an injunction barring the spammers from using its network in any way.

That could be a huge obstacle in Hawke's and Bournival's quest for an even bigger fortune from the Internet.

For NHPR, this is Brian McWilliams.