By Jimmy Moore
Talon News
April 29, 2004

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- About four months after President George W. Bush signed an historic spam ban into law, four people were charged on Wednesday for sending fake weight loss product e-mails.

Talon News reported in December that Bush signed the "Can Spam" bill into law in an effort to help Internet users with unwanted e-mails. The bill passed both houses of Congress overwhelmingly and went into effect on January 1, 2004.

It is estimated that half of all e-mail messages received by Americans is spam.

However, the new law requires spammers to allow recipients the opportunity to opt out of future mailings.

The charges filed against Daniel J. Lin, James J. Lin, Mark M. Sadek, and Christopher Chung in Detroit, Michigan are the first ones filed under the new law.

Specifically, these men are accused of impersonating different people in hundreds of thousands of spam messages peddling their so-called weight loss product. They were also delivering e-mails to people through unprotected relay computers on the Internet.

The men were released on bond after appearing in federal court on Wednesday.

Sadek was arrested "out of the clear blue" and was "absolutely shocked," according to his attorney James Feinberg. He will be pleading innocent to any forthcoming criminal charges.

"No one's done this before," Feinberg told the Associated Press. "It will be fun -- not for my client but for me professionally."

The specific scam conducted by the men involved a patch called AIT Herbal, Avatar Nutrition, Phoenix Avatar, and others that would allegedly help with weight loss. The company's headquarters were in Detroit and various towns outside of the city.

Sources close to the case reveal that the four men sent in excess of one million spam messages per day.

The Federal Trade Commission, which oversees and enforces the new "can spam" law, had received more than 10,000 complaints against the company for spam violations since January.

After consulting with medical experts, FTC investigators concluded that the ingredients in the weight-loss product sold through the spam e-mails did not work.

The FTC will announce the arrests in a news conference Thursday.

Talon News