Man Threatened Spam Attack In $200,000 Extortion Plot 77
52-year-old Anthony Digati was arrested for trying to extort $200,000 from an insurance firm by threatening to spam them with six million emails unless they paid up. Digati said he would use a spam service and his amazing talents as a "huge social networker" to drag the company "through the muddiest waters imaginable" and presumably unfriend everyone. He added that the price would increase to $3 million if they failed to pay up by Monday, according to federal authorities.
amazing. (Score:2, Interesting)
cops are actually taking action. i had a similar incident take place and the cops could not be bothered.
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Mafia? (Score:5, Funny)
"That's an awfully nice looking email server you've got there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it."
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*knocks over a display rack*
"Oops."
we need a fancy new name for the digital mafia (Score:2)
something with italian roots, but connoting the digital
hmmm
how about the digati?
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M4f1@
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6 million spam messages? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also known as Tuesday.
Re:6 million spam messages? (Score:4, Funny)
Tuesday. In the morning. From 8:15 AM to 8:25 AM. On a slow day.
Seems kinda more "Doctor Evil" than actual evil, doesn't it?
"I demand.." [brings pinkie to lip] ".. one MILLION dollars."
[collective governments of the world laugh with relief]
SF (Score:2)
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DAMN YOU! I had forgotten about tvtropes. Damnit damnit damnit damnit.
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DAMN YOU! I had forgotten about tvtropes. Damnit damnit damnit damnit.
If I don't have hours to kill, I'll read a page or two and drop any interesting links into a "tropes" bookmark folder for later perusal instead of opening tabs with them.
My tropes folder is now 50 entries large. It was only 5 large, and then one day I tried cleaning it out....
So what I'm saying is convince yourself to save things for later and then make sure 'later' never, under any circumstances, EVER arrives.
tvtropes? (Score:1)
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Tuesday afternoon. :P
Hire him. (Score:5, Funny)
If I were the company, I would have hired him for PR and marketing department.
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You forgot the “Oh, wait...”. ;)
Sir Spam Alot (Score:1)
We dine well here in Camelot, we eat ham and jam and spamalot.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luVjkTEIoJc [youtube.com]
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...On second thought lets not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
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I have to push the pramalot!
How the worm has turned!!! (Score:5, Funny)
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owning the CD isn't as bad as playing it.
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Target selection FAIL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Target selection FAIL (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of those Somali pirates that decided it would be a good idea to try to hijack a French corvette. Once they started shooting the French said "Welp, okay" and blew them out of the water.
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More that the pirates can't figure out what's a warship and what isn't.
The French actually have quite the military these days.
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Looks like they actually believed the jokes about the surrender-monkeys.
Remember, kids, it's not weak to appear weak, just make sure that crutch you lean on has enough ammo.
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Once they started shooting the French said "Welp, okay" and blew them out of the water.
Wait the French didn't surrender? Are you sure it was the French?
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Some plans are so foolish that it makes you wonder if there's actual brain damage involved. For one thing, even if his original plan worked, he'd still be a million in the hole and two, there's no way to hide something like that from the authorities for any amount of time.
Re:Target selection FAIL (Score:5, Informative)
According to the article at the register [theregister.co.uk]. He included his email addres and phone while talking about how evil and vindictive he is. He either didn't have the capacity to make rational decisions or never intended to succeed. Since he was also already in debt 1.2 mil and made his demand precisely 4x his life insurance premium that he was unhappy with I'm thinking it was a little of both.
Better article (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a Register link to avoid the slimy popups on the linked Fox news site:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/cyber_extortion_charges/ [theregister.co.uk]
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What you don't have a popup blocker?
Have you been frozen in time for 10 years?
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What, you don't have flashblock and noscript installed?
Holy hell the quality of geek declines rapidly as the years go by.
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Maybe it's changed from FF 3.0 to 3.5, but I grew tired of clicking twice for flash content that I wanted to see. One click for NoScript and a second click for FlashBlock.
I try to keep my browser lean (and lean still means ~10 extensions, mostly for web dev). NoScript + CookieMonster + RefControl seems to work good enough for me.
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You actually want to see flash content? What kind of deviant are you?
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They must not be on that site, then, because I checked it with Firefox on both Mac and Linux and got no pop-ups. I'm also running Noscript and Adblock-Plus; anyone who isn't, should be.
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Firefox won't block popups triggered by a click, presumably because it assumes you wanted the popup. The site does exactly that should you click on any empty space. NoScript will naturally nail it, though.
So I RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, So I got a funny mod above, then I read the article. This guy is $1.2 mil in debt and was provoked by 'becoming "dissatisfied" with the performance of his own universal life insurance policy.' That's sad. But wait, theres more:
""By the way," he added. "Yes, I am crazy. Yes, I am vindictive. Yes, I am extremely upset."
And to prove he wasn't joking, he allegedly included his personal phone number and email address. "
This man is obviously stressed out and possibly mentally ill. Still think he should go to jail though.
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This man is obviously stressed out and possibly mentally ill. Still think he should go to jail though.
Yes, send dude to jail so we can pay for his existance.
jail is obviously the answer to every crime, seeing as it stops crime.
OMG! (Score:5, Funny)
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The dude did manage to drag the company through slashdot - there is no water muddier.
I'm not sure what internet you are on. It sure isn't the same one that I'm on.
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Shh. Don't hurt him.
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just you wait as this news reaches 4chan...
Cue Dr. Evil Pinky... (Score:5, Funny)
Dr. Evil: If you don't pay up we're going to send out... ...6 MILLION emails.
[pinky to corner of mouth]
Number Two: Don't you think we send out *more* than six million emails? Six million emails isn't exactly a lot of spam these days. Virtucon alone gets over 9 billion spam messages per day!
69? (Score:2)
6 and 9, eh? :P
[REFORMATED] Re:Sorry Anthony.... (Score:2, Funny)
[GAHHHHH SLASHDOT FORMATTING.]
Sorry Anthony, but your scheme where a company pays you to not spam them advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based (X) vigilante
approach to preventing spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legiti
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The blank version probably just comes with it pre-checked.
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Extortion or Blackmail? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the "smear" consists of truthful but disparaging statements, it would fall within the bounds of free speech.
Go to jail. (Score:2)
Do not pass Go.
Do not collect $200,000 dollars.
Asshat.
Oh yeah, buster? (Score:2)
Now the price has gone up to TEN million!
Spambot had a dead man's trigger (Score:2)
What nobody says about this article... (Score:2)
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Why? Was he dead?
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Also approached by Mr. Digati... (Score:1)
An unnamed representative from another firm contacted by Mr. Digati said later, "We would have turned him in ourselves, but his threat got caught in our spam filter." ;-) lol
After reading . . (Score:5, Informative)
1. He wasn't going to spam their email servers, he was going to spam the world to smear their name "drag your company name and reputation, through the muddiest waters imaginable".
2. Looks like he wanted a resolution to the problems he was having because he felt they where doing him wrong. A little different than pure extortion. Basically a "You do me right, or I will tell the whole world of how your wrong me"
He started it would cost them millions to undo what he would do to the companies reputation and that he was very mad at them. This may not be as clear cut a case as the summary makes it.
Now to be honest, I also read it here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/cyber_extortion_charges/ [theregister.co.uk]
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Next time, just do it. Slander is cheaper than extortion. Also accomplishes more.
link to actual rant (Score:2)
As crazy as it sounds, this seems like more of an angry rant than an extortion request:
http://pastebin.com/DiBd9kAL [pastebin.com]