4 charged under new law on spam

ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. authorities charged four persons in Detroit yesterday with e-mailing fraudulent sales pitches for weight-loss products, the first criminal prosecutions under the government’s new Can-Spam law.

Court papers identified the four as Daniel J. Lin, James J. Lin, Mark M. Sadek and Christopher Chung, all thought to be living in suburban Detroit. They were accused of disguising their identities in hundreds of thousands of e-mail sales pitches and delivering e-mail by bouncing messages through unprotected relay computers on the Internet.

Mr. Chung and Mr. Sadek appeared in U.S. District Court and were released on bond, said Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The Lins have not been arrested.

Mr. Sadek did not return a telephone message left at his home; the Lins and Mr. Chung could not be located for comment at any of the addresses or telephone numbers listed in the court documents.

Authorities said their company sold a weight-loss patch under the corporate names AIT Herbal, Avatar Nutrition, Phoenix Avatar and others. The companies reportedly operated out of Detroit and nearby communities of West Bloomfield and Birmingham.

“These people were sending spam e-mails to at least a million people,” Ms. Balaya said.

Officials at the Federal Trade Commission, who planned to announce the arrests in Washington today, told U.S. postal investigators they had received more than 10,000 complaints about unwanted e-mail sent by the company.

The Can-Spam legislation, which went into effect Jan. 1, requires unsolicited e-mail to include a mechanism so that recipients can indicate they do not want to receive future mass mailings.

Analysts estimate that spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail, costs businesses as much as $10 billion in services and lost productivity a year.