Richard Colbert is an American former prolific
spammer based in
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
,
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, in an area known as "Spam Beach".
He would obtain clients' email addresses by searching
AOL
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017â ...
member profiles for any including phrases such as "business opportunity" or "multilevel marketing", believing them to be small-time salesmen like himself. He would then spam these individuals with offers for his service to spam on their behalf, and reply personally to anyone who responded. Having secured clients, he would send their advertisements to general recipients on lists he had purchased, charging up to
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
900 for a million addresses.
He was interviewed by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 2003, in which he insisted he always included legitimate "from" addresses in his messages, and honoured unsubscribe requests, believing the alternative to be detrimental to the business of online marketing. However, he also used
American Express's anonymous $25
temporary credit cards to set up short-lived email accounts with his local operator,
BellSouth, from which he could spam freely and without risk of being traced until each address was shut down.
However, despite making a profit from spamming (apparently clearing $130,000 in three months), he continued to live in a
mobile home
A mobile home (also known as a house trailer, park home, trailer, or trailer home) is a prefabricated structure, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site (either by being towed or on a trailer). Us ...
and obtain his clothes and equipment from
eBay
eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...
.
He retired from spamming in 2003, and was subsequently removed from
ROKSO
The Spamhaus Project is an international organisation based in the Principality of Andorra, founded in 1998 by Steve Linford to track email spammers and Spam (electronic), spam-related activity. The name ''spamhaus'', a pseudo-German expression, ...
, the
Spamhaus Project's list of prolific spammers.
See also
*
List of spammers
References
"Confessions of a Spam King"€”the ''New York Times'' article
Email spammers
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
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