The Spam Diaries

News and musings about the fight against spam.
 by Edward Falk

Friday, June 29, 2007

Spammer Bill Stanley loses in court, accused of defamation and making death threats

OK, here's one for the books. Spammer Bill Stanley created businesses called DefamationAction.com and ComplaintRemover.com which are — and I'm not making this up — "reputation services" dedicated to helping clients clear their good names by removing defamatory information about them from the internet.

Well, it ended about as well as you would expect. Stanley's methods apparently consist of putting up defamatory web pages about, and making death threats to, web sites that won't remove material his clients object to. For example, he sent this message to RipOffReport's owner, Ed Magedson:

This letter is being sent to you in the name of more than 500 businesses. No matter where you go, we will cause you a problem. Your life is in danger until you comply with our demands. This is your last warning. ...
Stanley has also targeted Magedson's lawyers and business providers.

On May 11, an Arizona judge issued a restraining order against Stanley and others in the reputation services business. Needless to say, Stanley ignored the restraining order, leading to more unpleasantness in court on June 21.

For the full story, including much longer excerpts from Stanley's death threats, visit c|net article Police Blotter: Dark side of 'reputation defending' service.

6 Comments:

Blogger Richard Zimmerman said...

I find it interesting that your web site (spamdiaries.blogspot.com) is now listed on the spamhaus SBL list. Because my e-mail provider uses spamhaus, I cannot receive any mail with a link in it that links to your site (or any other blogspot site for that matter)
What's worse, there's absolutely nothing you or I can do about it..
I'm no friend of the lawsuit, but as a blogspot user I have to admit that I feel a little powerless by this whole thing..

7:16 AM  
Blogger Spam Diaries said...

Sunnuvabitch, you're right.

It's because spamdiaries is hosted on Blogspot, and Blogspot is being abused by a lot of spammers. A brief random walk through blogspot shows that maybe half the blogs it hosts are actually fake blogs posted by spammers.

4:47 PM  
Blogger Spam Diaries said...

Well, for what it's worth, the spam blogs listed in the SBL listing all seem to be removed already, and I no longer see so many spam blogs in a rand walk (in fact, I don't see any), so it looks like someone at Google is on the ball here.

4:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good Job! :()

5:25 AM  
Anonymous BIll Stanley said...

This is Bill Stanley

Your article is complete crap as I never wrote a letter to Magedson. He wrote it to himself and anyone with half a brain can see that. Like I would write a letter saying your life is in danger. lol give me a break. also I did not lose in court. I chose not participate. you may call that a loss. I call it not wasting my time. Now I am not saying that I am an angel but with the extortion of 4700 companies and counting Magedson is the real criminal

7:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sadly, abuse at blogspot.com is still not a valid email address, and a lot of folks aren't going to be accepting email as a result.

1:08 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home