August 25, 2004

Dozens Charged in Push Against Spam and Scams

By SAUL HANSELL

Federal and state law enforcement agencies have quietly arrested or charged
dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail, identity theft and other
online scams in recent weeks, according to several people involved in the
actions.

The cases, which have been brought by law enforcement offices around the
country, are expected to be announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft in a
news conference in Washington on Thursday.

Federal authorities have stepped up their efforts to crack down on junk
e-mail messages, or spam, since Congress passed a law last December
criminalizing fraudulent and deceptive e-mail practices. The law subjects
spammers to fines and jail terms of up to five years.

So far, the law has had little noticeable effect. Spam represents 65 percent
of all e-mail, up from 58 percent when the law was passed, according to
Symantec, a company that makes a widely used spam filter.

The new cases are also expected to involve charges of credit card fraud,
computer crime and other offenses that carry significant penalties. Many of the
cases were developed by an unusual investigative team that combined federal law
enforcement officials and executives from industries that do business through
the Internet. Nearly two dozen investigators work in an office in Pittsburgh
operated by the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, a nonprofit
organization with close ties to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Much of the financing for the efforts, known as Operation Slam Spam, comes
from the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group that wants to promote what
it sees as the legitimate use of e-mail marketing.

"We felt that the key to the new law was enforcement," said H.
Robert Wientzen, who recently stepped down as the
president of the marketing association and is still involved in the antispam campaign. "We want spammers to realize that
spam is not a free game for them and that they face real penalties if they
continue."

The operation has built a database of known spammers, drawing from law
enforcement agencies and from private companies that are investigating and
bringing civil suits against some of the biggest users of junk e-mail messages.
It has also deployed online decoys to catch spammers and has purchased products
advertised in spam messages so that the financial records can be traced to the
ultimate source of the message.

As the cases have been developed, the Pittsburgh group has used its
information to persuade prosecutors to devote some resources to bringing cases
against junk e-mail companies and other abusers of the Internet.

Law enforcement agencies have only recently taken an interest in fighting
the spam problem. It is a series of small crimes, often without clear victims,
that is hard to investigate.

But prosecutors and investigators are starting to become more aggressive as
the volume of spam continues to increase and as the messages that spammers send
are being used more often to perpetrate other crimes, including identity theft
and credit card fraud.

And the authorities have become increasingly concerned about the spammers'
use of computer viruses to hijack millions of desktop computers, using them to
relay their messages and hide their true identities.

The Justice Department announcement expected on Thursday is meant to
highlight several different government actions related to computer crime. The
department has conducted a handful of similar operations in the past, calling
them cyber sweeps, but the crackdown to be disclosed this week is thought to be
the biggest by far.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

In May, Jana D. Monroe, assistant director of the F.B.I.'s
cyber division, told a Senate committee that the agency was developing cases on
more than 50 of the most active spammers.

Prosecutors had hoped to announce some prominent convictions earlier this
summer. But the cases have proven to be more complex than expected, in part
because of new evidence turned up at each step.

"These cases never end," said Steve Linford,
the director of the Spamhaus Project, a clearinghouse
of information on spammers based in London that works with law enforcement
agencies. "When they seize a whole bunch of computers from one gang, they
normally see a lot of information that leads to another gang."

Indeed, federal and state prosecutors have arrested some people whose names
they will not reveal at the news conference this week because those first
suspects are leading them to others involved in spam and other crimes,
officials said.

In April, the Justice Department brought what it said was the first criminal
prosecution under the new spam law against three people in suburban Detroit.
Last month, however, the case was quietly dismissed at the government's
request.

Terrence Berg, the prosecutor on the case, said such dismissals were normal
procedure and the charges could be brought again after more evidence was
developed.

Spam has proven to be a plague of the modern world that has defied nearly
every effort to mitigate its effects. Major companies and Internet providers
have spent millions of dollars on software meant to identify and discard
unwanted messages, but the spammers have found myriad techniques to get around
the barriers.

Efforts to develop technical standards that would help separate
"good" e-mail from "bad" have been delayed by bickering
among the big e-mail providers.

It is unclear whether the heightened spate of criminal prosecutions will
make much difference in the in-boxes of the half-billion e-mail users around
the world.

"There is such a large number of spammers,''
said Enrique Salem, a senior vice president of Symantec, "that no matter
how many you arrest, more people will send spam.''

But Mr. Linford of Spamhaus
said he thought that the current wave of prosecutions had the potential to at
least temporarily diminish the flood of spam.

"Spammers believe that they will never be caught,'' Mr. Linford said. "If they get
10, 20, 30 well-known spammers, the rest of the spam community will start to
notice. Any spammers who can be made to give up because they think the F.B.I.
is getting too close is very good for us.''

Still, Mr. Linford added that spam activity had
been increasing overseas and that spammers in other countries, especially
Russia, were expected to move quickly to fill any gaps left if spammers in the
United States are shut down or scared off.

"Next year and the year after,'' he said, "we are going to see
Russia as the main spam problem.''

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company