SEC Going After Spammers Now, Too

from the everyone-wants-a-piece-of-spammers dept

It seems that everyone wants a go at bringing down a spammer. While there have been a few cases of state officials going after spammers, at the federal level, it's been mostly limited to the FTC - and they only go after spammers for "misleading advertising claims" instead of the actual spamming. Well, now the SEC is getting into the act as well, and are going after a spammer who sent out (and profited from) misleading stock advice. The guy apparently set up a number of different businesses and aliases where he would set up websites touting a stock and also spamming "stock recommendations" out to his spam list. His defense, of course, is that there was a disclaimer at the bottom of each email. However, the SEC still says he was being misleading - since he claims the information he sent was based on his own review of the stocks, when (of course) the reality was that he just passed on the promotional info of whoever paid him to spam. Hopefully, this increased focus on bringing down spammers for whatever reason will make at least a few spammers think twice before continuing their activities. Unfortunately, that's unlikely, as spammers still seem to think that what they do is completely legal.