U.S. charges four under new law against 'spam' e-mails
Federal authorities say they managed to pierce the murky underworld of Internet spam e-mails, filing the first criminal charges under the government's new "can spam" legislation.
Court documents in the landmark case in Detroit describe a nearly inscrutable puzzle of corporate identities, bank accounts and electronic storefronts in one alleged spam operation.
At one point, investigators said, packages were sometimes delivered to a restaurant, where a greeter accepted them and passed them along to one defendant.
Officials at the Federal Trade Commission, who announced the arrests in Washington on Thursday, said U.S. District Court Judge James F. Holderman froze the operation's assets at their request.
The FTC told U.S. postal investigators they had received more than 10,000 complaints about unwanted e-mails sent by the defendants.
