According to a report from the FTC, Christopher Baith, Cosme Monarrez, Jr, and Sorabh Verma had sent spam e-mails, purporting to be from Yahoo!, advising consumers that they had won a Playstation 2 or another expensive gift. Consumers simply had to click on a hyperlink to collect their prize.
Unfortunately the link took consumers to a spoofed Yahoo! site. Spoofing is a common trick among those who send spam – it exploits the reputation (and often the systems) of another party to add apparent legitimacy to their messages.
Once on the site, consumers were told to click a "yes" button to download software necessary to complete a form that would allow them to claim their prize. Consumers were told that there would be no connection charges for the download. However once the download was complete, consumers were then automatically disconnected from the internet, and reconnected to a premium rate line that charged up to $3.99 per minute.
The FTC charged the trio with unfair and deceptive practices. Under the settlement announced on Wednesday the alleged scam has been shut down and the three spammers prohibited from sending "any e-mail that misrepresents the identity of the sender or the subject of the e-mail", said the FTC.
Baith has also been ordered to pay $10,000.
In a separate action the FTC brought a claim against BTV Industries, the company that created the modem dialer software used by the spammers. This action has also been settled, with the company agreeing to pay $25,000 of its "alleged ill-gotten gains".
According to the FTC the company is also barred from "failing to disclose the cost of accessing any 900-number pay-per-call service, as well as from misrepresenting that consumers have won a prize, that consumers will be connected to any web site toll-free, and that any of BTV's products or services are associated with a third party".