Over the past several weeks, our mail server has been used to "bounce" (forward) large quantities of SPAM onwards to AOL, Prodigy, and MciMail. Note: The mail server no longer relays mail, but SPAMmers still attemp to use it for SPAM relay, in the worst cases, I have had to use IP filtering to stop it, but in every case I'm forwarding our SMTP logs to the party responsible for the originating IP. This has resulted in several more "kills." So SPAMmers beware!!
Fortunetely with the help of several other ISP's, I got my first "kill" against a SPAMmer. But SPAMmers are hard to keep at bay, ISP's have been working hard to KO them by terminating their accounts. So the SPAMmers have turned to using "throwaway" accounts from AT&T Net, Bellsouth, Sprint, etc.. Much to their credit, these providers have also been quite good about closing SPAMers down. But with millions of promotional CD's and floppies littering the countryside, it simply a matter of picking another one out of the trash to have at it. Once they are connected to the IP world, they can use their SPAM mailers to attack SMTP servers everywhere. Most of the big providers like AOL have implemented filters to block junk email from known SPAM sites, so SPAMmers starting attacking other net resources to get around the filtering.
I began to wonder what would make people go through all this net chicanery
to get their SPAM out. When I looked at the bounced SPAM, it all seemed
to say the same thing.
In a way, it read like this SPAMmer was a reject from the 60's and trying to sell you on "zen" or some other "power of the mind" technique that saffron-robed "gurus" from the far east were hawking back in those days. Other SPAM's promoting Mega$Nets or similar Ponzi schemes took more of a "working class" attitude. "Hi, I'm Joe Butthead, I used to be a hardworking computer programer in the MIS department of a large corporation. I resented the fact that the owners of the corporation made large amounts of money and I made next to nothing. I worked hard and long and only to be fired after I had trained some entry-level kids in the MIS department. Afterwards I spent countless hours looking over the help wanted ads in the paper and mailing and faxing hundreds of resumes all of which came to nothing. My wife was ready to leave me, the bank was ready to foreclose on the house, the repo man was ready to put my car on the hook, I couldn't afford new clothes for the kids, and my creditors were harassing me day and night. Thanks to this wonderful money-making program, my marraige is back on track and I was able to give my wife a brand new Lincoln Town Car on our aniversary, I retired the mortgage on the house, paid off all my creditors, and sent my kids to an exclusive private school in Switzerland. Next week, my wife and I are leaving for a 6 week long around-the-world cruise on the QE2 and we'll be wintering at our new condo in Sarasota. This wonderful money-making program made all this possible."
On closer examination, I found references to a domain registered as
"truewealth.com." (guess that is where "prosperity" got his/her first
name) A quick trip to the InterNic whois server and "truewealth.com"
was registered to:
Bill Osterhout
6105 Oxfordshire Ct.
Raleigh, NC 27606
(919) 851-8512
email:prosperity@truewealth.com
Note: Mr. Osterhout's "Truewealth" web site disappeared from the web a few weeks back, (as of May 15th, 1998) so what are we to think? Did he make his 19 trillion dollars (maximum Mega$Nets earnings potential) and move to an island paradise with a black Acura Integra in the driveway? Somehow I doubt it. 19 trillion dollars IS a lot of money though and according to the Mega$Nets precision earnings calculator all one needs to do is merely sell 99 disks (and everyone under you likewise sells 99 disks) and that 19 trillion will be winging its way to you. But the math doesn't seem to check out, to get 19 trillion dollars, 981 billion people have to send you $20. Last time I looked, the global population is around 5.5 billion, that being the case, to make 19 trillion, every inhabitant of the planet will have to mail you $20 178 times or $3560 in a lump sum which as a potential Mega$Nets tycoon might put you before the prying eyes of the IRS. But on the brighter side, your 19 trillion is enough to buy EVERY share of stock on the NYSE and you'll have 7 trillion left over.
I live next door to Karen Liddell and she has all the money in the world. I make 8 trillion a month so I'm not doing too bad either. Can you imagine what 8 trillion in $20 bills looks like on your kitchen table. I had to buy a specially reinforced kitchen table to support the weight of all those $20 bills. I'm pretty sure the Bureau of Printing and Engraving had to put on extra shifts to print all those $20 bills that were due me and best thing about it is that the IRS doesn't know a damn thing about it!! That's the wonder, not only can you make 8 trillion a month, but you'll never pay a cent of tax on it!!
Hmmm....I thought maybe the SPAMmer I KO'd was a client (perhaps disciple would be a better term) of Mr. Osterhout a.k.a. Prosperity. So what kind of gizmo, potion, snake oil, or cold fusion scheme was Mr. Osterhout offering to give rise to such SPAM? It seems these days, people often register domains for web servers, so I pointed my browser at "www.truewealth.com." In the meantime, I trace routed "truewealth" to see just where the heck it was coming from. The plot thickened, ahh....AGIS.NET, the SPAMer's friend. (a thinly veiled appeal to other backbone providers to cancel their peering agreements with AGIS.NET a.s.a.p.) The truewealth web site turns out to be a promotional site for a "software" product called "Mega$Nets." The site proclaims that "Mega$Nets" is the greatest money making scheme (they use the term "money-go-round") since the Comstock Lode. I thought, "so this "Mega$Net" thing is making SPAMmers go nuts and trashing the net at the risk of potential felony charges under postal regulations, ECPA, and state laws. Sure, making big money is the American dream, but how many of us want to take the risk of spending the next 10 years of making little rocks out of big rocks at the prison quarry in Lewisburg, Pa.. "Mega$Nets" comes close to being an engraved invitation to being a "guest" of the Federal Bureau of Prisons for at least the next 10 years. The Feds might like to claim they do a good job at running their prisons, but most "veterans" of the system will tell you that your anal retentiveness will be put to the ultimate test while you are their "guest." Look at poor Ivan Boesky, poor guy has never been quite the same since his stay as a "guest." The ex-billionaire arb turned into a hippie, 30 years past vogue, and hid away in the Pennsylvania mountains and living off his alimony checks, smoking wacky weed to escape his wretched reality. When "Mega$Nets" is closely examined, a similar destiny could be waiting, but most likely without the 15K monthly alimony that Ivan enjoys.
So what is "Mega$Nets," and why would it make you a potential felony defendant with a state or federal rap hanging over your head? "Mega$Nets" is crudely written visual basic program that is basically a computerized "Ponzi" or pyramid scheme. Such schemes have been felony violations of state and federal laws for years. When you download the "Mega$Nets" software, you become the sucker. The idea is that you send $20 to each of 5 "agents." Once each "agent" has your money, (they want cash or money orders, checks are too easy to trace) they send you a "code" to "unlock" the software. When all 5 "agents" have sent their unlock codes, you become an "agent" as well and can distribute the program with you being an "agent." So you go out and SPAM the hell out of the net trying to convince people to download "your" version of "Mega$Nets" where you are one of the 5 "agents." Everyone you sucker will send you $20 for the unlock code, and in the Ponzi tradition they'll hopefully sucker some more. It is patently illegal although the web sites promoting "Mega$Nets" go to great lengths trying to convince people that it is not a Ponzi scheme because you are supposedly selling a legitimate software product for value received. What "Mega$Nets" actually turns out to be is a chain letter where the "legitimate" software product that supposedly gets you around anti-fraud laws is the chain letter itself. Despite all these fancy explanations, not many in the law enforcement community are fooled. The "Mega$Nets" scheme DOES involve the postal service, (you use them to send them your $20 of sucker money and the people YOU sucker do likewise) and the postal service takes a rather dim view of this. Some Mega$Nets sites even claim that they have received letters from postmasters stating that the postal service has no objection to the use of the mails for Mega$Nets. The very fact that Mega$Nets is based on cash transactions leads me to believe that even the promotors of the scheme know they are on shakey legal ground. Checks, credit cards, and other non-cash commerce leaves a paper trail which could be used against them legally and it also helps them escape the prying eyes of the IRS.
Your "computer software business" has a better chance of putting you in a dank, moldy, rat-infested cell with "bubba" as your cellmate. He might take "real" good care of you. You won't have enough money to hire Gary Spence or Roy Black, and disinterested court-appointed lawyer will tell you take the deal the US Attorney offers.
"Mega$Nets" probably has better chance of leaving you broke or with your life in tatters once the justice wringer has squeezed you. All I can say to Mr. Osterhout and his "prosperity" scam, sue me you (expletive deleted) and I'll see you in court. You've been distributing our domain name in your SPAMvertising and I'd like to see you try to defend your Ponzi scheme in the well of any court in this country. Take your choice, North Carolina or Louisiana. I could care less because when all is said and done, the bailiff will put the cuffs on YOU and I'll file a civil action against you that will make you eat your Wheaties.
Forget about suing me for libel or use of any copyrighted objects. YOU laid yourself bare by putting up a web site. I've been down this route before and know full well about the "fair use" doctrine of the copyright law. I don't sell or promote "Mega$Nets," but I can sure as hell make comment on it.
The Mega$Nets sites tell you that this program puts you in business as a legitimate "high-tech" software company, just like Bill Gates. The implication being that Mega$Nets will do for you as Microsoft did for Bill Gates. NOTE: Apparently, the operator of one Mega$Nets site received some email questioning the legality of Mega$Nets, his response was to write on one of his pages, "If Mega$Nets was illegal, Bill Gates would be your cellmate." Huh?? Nobody ever claimed that selling software was illegal or even that Mega$Nets itself was illegal. Indeed, Mega$Nets is quite legal of and in itself. What is (emphasis added) illegal is the use of mails in the furtherance of the scheme. The losers who endlessly SPAM with the "4 reports" chain letter scheme think they get around the law in the fact they are "selling" a "product." The postal inspection service begs to differ, they interpret this as a lottery where the "chance" factor is the willingness of people to participate in the scheme. Mega$Nets losers think their scheme is "more" legal or perhaps "less" illegal because the "product" being foisted around is "computer codes," the "codes" being the "stock" that makes the program work. Actually, the tangibility of the item being exchanged is of no consequence in the eyes of the law. It's the raison d'erte that counts, i.e. to participate in a game of chance with the hopes of winning a lot of money. Charles Ponzi, from which these and similar schemes drew their name, did make some money from his scheme which involved speculating on international reply coupons by purchasing them in one country and redeeming them in another country for cash. The scheme took advanatge of the wildly fluctuating exchange rates in the aftermath of WW1. Ponzi was caught, his assets were seized, and he spent 10 years in jail after which he was deported.
For more information on the Mega$nets scam, go to Rolf Schmidt's interesting
Mega$Nets page at his MMF Hall of Humiliation. Rolf has done
much to debunk the myth of Mega$nets that the Mega$nets sites babble endlessly
about and you can download the Mega$Nets source code. Mega$Nets comes with
VBRUN300.DLL, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that
it was written in Visual Basic, and with VB Decompile the source code
is there for all to see. No sophisticated "hacker proof" routines there,
nor any evidence that the program is virus proofed like the sites say it
is. Rolf also gives you some suggestions on how you can have some fun with
Mega$nets and drive those people nuts. It's a nicely done site for which
Rolf deserves ample kudos. Also read Wallace Wang's article
about the Mega$Nets scam in the backissues section of the Boardwatch site.
To have some "Mega$Fun" with Mega$Nets get Megahack, this is a Mega$Nets
editor that lets you edit the .DAT file of Mega$Nets, you can enter your own
"stock" (unlock) codes, change the names, and all the other fields in the file.
Go to Yahoo or some other search engine and enter Mega$Nets or Meganets, this
will bring up a number of Mega$Nets sites, and go to one and download a copy
of Mega$Nets. Use Megahack and edit the .DAT file, let's say enter the names
of the 5 "vendors" using bogus names with the addresses of well known prisons,
use a zip code directory to make the addresses look real. Place your edited
.DAT file back in the distribution copy of Mega$Nets you downloaded, zip it
up and email it back to the Mega$Nets site email address which is found
on the screen listing the "vendors." Play dumb and write that you think
some of these people are in jail and that leaves you questioning the legaility
of the scheme. They'll probably email you right back asking where you got
that copy of Mega$Nets. Use Megahack again, and enter 5 more bogus "vendor"
names and email that copy back to the Mega$Nets site, write that something
looks fishy and you wonder how that can be being that Mega$Nets is so
"cheatproof" that even the best computer nerds in the world couldn't "break"
into it. The email exchanges you can have with this can be real fun.