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PGTS Humble Blog

Thread: Internet Security/Malware/Spam

Author Image Gerry Patterson. The world's most humble blogger
Edited and endorsed by PGTS, Home of the world's most humble blogger

Not Just Famous -- But IN-Famous!


Chronogical Blog Entries:



Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:00:32 +1000

Dusty: What does that mean ... Infamous?

Ned: Oh, Dusty. In-famous is when you're more than famous. This man El Guapo, he's not just famous ... He's In famous!

This line, from the eighties comedy classic Three Amigos is a great gag about fame and infamy. And the fame of being infamous is, after a fashion, a restatement of the show biz adage -- There's no such thing as bad publicity! -- Or so the theory goes -- When it is applied to Pump and Dump scams -- Which are a method of inflating asset values with spam, splogs and/or fake websites -- And then unloading the inflated assets on unwary investors, harvesting the profits, and riding off into the sunset with saddle bags full of capital gain.

In June last year, the mailhub for the PGTS site was busier then usual processing some egregious spam from a Florida spam gang. This spamming incident was a global event and it has subsequently catapulted CashBlasterPro into the Internet Hall Of (Small Time) Infamy. At the time your blogger cast aspersions as to the authenticity of the purported author, Robert Kuntz. However, as it turns out, he may actually exist!

When your humble blogger first encountered the CashBlasterPro spammers, it seemed that some of the names associated with them belonged to people who were already well-known on the Internet, for activities other then spamming. And so dear reader, your blogger rather hastily concluded that the names were phony. However, information has since come to hand that they might be real. Of course there is The Robert Kuntz ... The famous game-designer ... You can read about him on Wikipedia. But the other Robert Kuntz, unlike his famous baby-boomer namesake is a Gen-X email marketeer, who initially hailed from California, and then moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, and later to Florida ... And he is, well, dear reader how can I put this? He is more than famous! ... He's not just famous, he's IN-famous!

Some of the businesses (the other) Robert was associated with during his travels from California to Florida included companies with less than illustrious titles, such as Tips4Profits.com, Y2K Highway Inc and CashBlasterPro. However we should not hold his poor choice of company nomenclature against him. More serious was an incident during his time as CEO of Y2K Highway, when the SEC filed a complaint against him and his company, for Internet fraud and spam. Details of this complaint can be found in SEC Litigation Release No. 16556

And last week, all the way from north eastern USA, came news of a case in the Pennsylvania Eastern District Court, involving The Cervelle Group of Florida. It is alleged that this group were engaged in Pump and Dump scams. This was rather old news, dear reader, since the case began over a year ago. However it was brought to your blogger's attention by a resident of Pennsylvania who had occasion to read this humble blog, and felt inclined to pass this little tidbit along with the additional information that the Cervelle Group employed the same (CashBlasterPro) Florida spam gang to do the pumping.

To date, your humble blogger has not confirmed this rumour ... However, it does seem that the Cervelle domain is hosted by a Florida company called AnyThingEmail.com. Now, you may think dear reader, that any company based in Florida, the spam capital of the Free World, with a name like "AnyThingEmail.com", is hardly going to be selling cookies for the local girl guides group. And if that thought did cross your mind dear reader, I must say it is a cruel thought indeed ... Cruel but probably fair. It also poses the question is there really a BJ Bishop? And what has become of him? And what happened to the Buzzbot and the Web 2.0 Upgrade of the entire Internet at the click of a mouse?

And also dear reader, if you are not up to date with Internet investing, you might wonder ... How exactly do Pump and Dump scams work?

The scam is, like many post-modern scams, an old one wearing new Internet apparel. It is a form of securities fraud. In the USA it was sometimes called Microcap Stock Fraud, because it often involved so-called Microcap companies. It works like this ... The stock price of the company is ramped up by promulgating false rumours, purporting to be inside information. If the rumours catch and spread the perpetrators can offload their inflated stock for a considerable profit.

The modern variant is more likely to involve companies traded on the NASDAQ Small Cap market, and the scammers usually employ electronic means such as email to spread the rumours. The most common electronic instruments are:

So what will happen to the CashBlasterPro spammers now that the SEC seems to be catching up with them? Perhaps, after all this, it is possible to say that there is such a thing as bad publicity?

Yes, Dusty, They're Not Just Famous! ... They're more than famous ...


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