San Francisco Lawyer Got $7K from E-mail Scammer

A San Francisco lawyer, Daniel Balsam, was awarded $7,000 for unsolicited commercial e-mails he used to get in an unusual trial under California's anti-spam law, according to the news published by The New York Times on March 17, 2010.

Even before Balsam graduated from a law school in the year 2008, he started suing hackers. The lawyer also registered a case against Trancos Inc. (USA) an advertising firm in Redwood City, for some ads that appeared in his very own e-mail inbox in the year 2007.

Words like "paid survey" and "your business" on the "from" line of the e-mails were the legal tripping point for the advertising firm. San Mateo County Superior Court Judge, Marie Weiner, stated in ruling in March 2010 that the ads\e-mails violated the 2004 anti-spam law of California, as per the news published by SFGate on March 16, 2010. State law has banned uninvited mails that hide their source. In addition, distorted subject lines are also not acceptable.

According to the reports, Trancos secretly registered the domain "USAproductsOnline.com". It was this domain from which the spam e-mails were distributed.. Balsam says that "USA Products Online" is a fabricated business name and not an authentic firm. Further, Balsam claims that Trancos has almost half a dozen divisions of its firm. Every second division has registered its fabricated business name, as per the news published by SFWeekly on March 17, 2010.

Balsam's lawyer, Timothy Walton, held that advertisers who have concealed their identities have violated the trust of consumers, according to the news published by SFGate on March 16, 2010.

However, Robert Nelson, Trancos' lawyer, claims his client to be a reputed, law-abiding advertising business over the Internet and stated that he would call for for a ruling. He said that federal law basically manages the spam, and a user who has truly suffered losses and cheated, which was not claimed by Balsam, is permitted to file a suit under the state law.

In the meantime, as told by the lawyers on both sides of Balsam's case, this issue seems to be among the first claims made by a user under the anti-spam law of the state which was tried out outside small claims court.

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» SPAMfighter News - 3/26/2010