Bigfoot won court order over spam king

Bigfoot won a court order against spam king Sanford Wallace and his company, Philadelphia-based Cyber Promotions, that will require him to pay $10,000 a day if he sends junk email to customers of Bigfoot or forges the domain name.

The consent decree, signed by Judge Barbara Jones of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the latest in a series of court orders against Wallace.

“One area that this case breaks new ground is in its imposition of a $10,000 per day charge,” David Kramer, a San Francisco lawyer who won one of the first lawsuits against Wallace, told the The New York Times.

“He’s going to have a real problem engaging in this practice in the future because he is legally prohibited from doing it,” Kramer said. “Courts around the country have prohibited him from sending any junk email to the largest ISPs in the country, the very base that he exploited in the past.”

In the Bigfoot case, Wallace also has been ordered to remove all addresses associated with the company from his software packages, which are marketed to other spammers.

Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Dennis C. Vacco said his office has negotiated settlements and $20,000 in fines from 15 spammers that were pitching pyramid schemes and chain letters.

“This is an important milestone in our common efforts to make the Internet a safer and more enjoyable environment for millions of email users,” said Vacco. “To reach the 27th level of the pyramid a new member would need to recruit more people than there are on the planet just to make a profit,” he said.