On Wed, 14 Dec 1994, John Hannum wrote:
 
>
> During the past year, there have been three such mailings that have
> "succeeded":  One poster said that the end of the world was nigh;
> another advertised the services of their law firm in the so-called
> "Green Card Lottery" message; and a third, labeled "MAKE.MONEY.FAST"
> was the Usenet equivalent of the old chain letter.
>
 
  Ah... this is eye-witness account here.  The spamming incident regarding
  the "Green Card Lottery", happened right here in Phoenix... right on
  my (former) host's node, INDIRECT.COM which is owned by Internet Direct Co.
  The perpetrator was a local law firm, Siegel & Canter.  Yes, they brought
  our system and internet access to a crawl for almost a week as irate email
  from usenet users all over the world jammed our host in response to
  S & C's  "spamming-the-globe" deed.   Their account was disabled but the
  damage was already done.
 
> Of the three, the one that got the most attention was the Green Card
> Lottery spam (1).  According to the Washington Post, the law firm
> in question considered the Internet to be "an ideal, low-cost and
> perfectly legitimate way to target people likely to be potential
> clients."
 
  To add insult to an injury, C&S threatened to sue Internet Direct for
  cutting them off while never admitting any wrong doing!   Well, we the
  other users offered to counter-sue C&S for disrupting our Internet access
  due to C&S's negligent action and I think that got them to back off.
 
>
> Since the spammers are alleged to have posted to over 6,000 groups,
> they surely spent quite a bit of somebody's money.
>
 
  Yep, Internet Direct took a big hit and lost many customers to rival
  providers.   I too switched to a my current carrier but not directly as a
  result of the spamming... mainly due to economics and better service.
 
 
 [dCAT]
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Who_witnessed_a_Grand_Spam_unfold!