Spam Kings (17 page)

But Cowles is also the target of a stalker who has created a Web site larded with
pictures of his home, his driving record and a pair of police mug shots from
non-spam-related arrests.

"We had to go to a prosecutor to stop this woman from following my wife and taking
pictures of her," Cowles said.

Brad Bournival might have been precocious at chess, but his first attempt at spamming
was downright pitiful. In October 2001, he mailed ads for an herbal energy pill to a list of
50,000 email addresses. Hawke said he had bought the list from Alan "Dr. Fatburn" Moore, who
had harvested them from eBay. The addresses usually gave Hawke a good response rate—nearly
two-tenths of a percent—so Bournival braced himself for a deluge of around one hundred
orders worth several thousand dollars.

A week went by, and he mysteriously still hadn't received a single order.

Bournival stuck with it, though. After some additional coaching from Hawke, the
17-year-old was soon pulling down nearly one thousand dollars each week as a spammer, mostly
from sales of pheromone cologne and ink-jet refill kits. The money was proof that he had
made the right decision to drop out of school. Young relatives and friends still in school
had no money or were working minimum-wage jobs, jealous of his new career as an Internet
entrepreneur.

On Hawke's suggestion, Bournival plowed some of his spamming profits back into the
business. He bought a couple of new computers and had a DSL line installed in his mother's
apartment on Montgomery Street in Manchester. The phone company didn't do inside wiring, so
Bournival had to snake the wire from the network interface box at the back of the building
up the siding and into a window on the second floor. Inside, he used duct tape to secure the
wire to the floor so no one would trip on it. But that didn't stop the pit bull owned by his
mother's boyfriend from chewing through the wire one day and temporarily downing his
Internet connection.

Bournival's web sites were held together with the digital equivalent of duct tape and
were prone to similar problems. In March of 2002, anti-spammers discovered that his
pheromone-labs.com site, which he shared with Hawke, was insecure and allowed anyone to
browse the customer order data, including credit card numbers. Someone posted a note to
Nanae about the discovery and published the domain registration record for the site, which
included Bournival's name, address, email, and home phone number. It was just six months
into his spamming career, and Bournival had already been outed on Nanae.

When Shiksaa heard the news about the open directory, she surfed to pheromone-labs.com
and took a look around for herself. The ordering page caught her eye—it listed QuikSilver
Enterprises and a post office box in Montpelier, Vermont. She posted a message on Nanae
reminding anti-spammers that QuikSilver was run by Davis Wolfgang Hawke, who was prone to
using numerous aliases. She assumed Braden Bournival was one of them.

When an anti-spammer named Terry announced he had sent an email to Bournival to warn him
about the security problem, Shiksaa fired off a quick reply.

"Why? He's a longtime spammer," she wrote.

Terry, obviously in awe of her, apologized. "One day I will learn..." he said.

Soon after the incident, pheromone-labs.com was added to the Spews.org spam blacklist.
Because Bournival's domain was actually hosted on a web server operated by Dr. Fatburn,
Spews listed the site as part of Fatburn's record. Since early 2002, Hawke and Bournival had
been using the Maryland spammer to host some of their sites. They also arranged to use
landing pages at Dr. Fatburn's 2002marketing.com site. It was all part of an uneasy truce
worked out between Hawke and Fatburn in late 2001. Hawke had agreed to stop ripping off
Fatburn's diet pill ads and instead to start sending out spams for Extreme Power Plus (EPP).
Hawke's sales of EPP earned Fatburn a commission from Dutch International.

But the commingling of QuikSilver and Maryland Internet Marketing on Spews meant Dr.
Fatburn would often be blamed for Bournival and Hawke's spams for months to come.

Occasional setbacks didn't dampen Bournival's desire to ratchet up his spam income. He
experimented with a variety of different products, quickly dropping those that didn't sell
well, such as Quick-Bust, a "breast enhancer." But in time he began to resent the revenue
split he had agreed to with Hawke. It seemed increasingly like a tax for being allowed to
use Hawke's merchant account. Bournival was able to convince Hawke to lower his cut of
Bournival's sales to just 20 percent. But the younger spammer wanted even more for
himself.

When Bournival turned eighteen in April 2002, he celebrated by registering his own trade
name—Basic Internet Marketing Services—with the New Hampshire Secretary of State. Then he
signed up for his own credit card merchant account. Now he was able to capture all of the
profits from any spam he sent, without Hawke knowing. To prevent his mentor from becoming
suspicious, Bournival continued to do the occasional mailing for Hawke and even began
handling some of his order fulfillment—packing up and shipping out bottles of diet pills and
other products. That way, Hawke would continue to provide him with mailing lists and other
benefits.

Bournival had an explanation ready if Hawke ever discovered he was being double-crossed:
You're the one who preaches that a person's first concern should be himself. I'm
only doing what you taught me, or what you would have done yourself in my
shoes
.
^[
1
]

During his visits to Pawtucket, Bournival had seen how Hawke was capable of manipulating
the people around him. Michael Clark, the Rhode Island high school chess star, was totally
under Hawke's spell, even mimicking his mannerisms. Hawke had also gotten Mauricio Ruiz
under his thumb by paying Ruiz's rent and otherwise helping him out financially. Even when
he was socializing with people, Hawke was always in charge, with everyone else just along
for the ride. Bournival promised himself he would never let Hawke control him in that
way.

That June of 2002, Bournival discovered what would become his breakout product.
Certified Natural
Laboratories (formerly Internet Product Distributors), the Kansas firm that had
been supplying him with pheromones, informed him that it had developed a new supplement. The
primary ingredient of Maxaman
was the aphrodisiac and stimulant yohimbe, but Certified wasn't going to market
the product like previous herbal Viagra alternatives. Instead, Certified would position
Maxaman as a penis-enlargement pill.

Certified Natural provided Bournival with sample ad copy that claimed Maxaman could
increase a man's penis size by 25 percent. The pills accomplished this, according to the ad,
by boosting blood flow to the penis, "thus expanding the sponge-like erectile tissue in the
penis, leading to size gains in both length and thickness." Maxaman worked its magic fairly
quickly, according to Certified. After taking Maxaman for three to eight weeks, "you should
be able to notice an increase in thickness in both erect and flaccid states, as well as an
overall increase in length." Noting that "a recent survey showed that 68% of women are
unsatisfied with the size of their partner's penis," the ad included a helpful chart that
depicted "the most recent data on penis size. See how you measure up!"

None of this information appeared at Certified Natural's web site about Maxaman. The
site simply described the product as a "male-muscle boosting system" and delicately
suggested Maxaman enabled men to "enhance their anatomy without dangerous surgery." The site
made no specific promises about size gains, nor did it include instructions that appeared in
the ad about "how to measure your penis size correctly."

Bournival wasn't bothered by the discrepancies, which suggested Certified Natural was
wary of making fraudulent claims but didn't mind if its spammers did. Bournival was just
happy to add a new product to his mix, and he began spamming for Maxaman using Certified
Natural's ad copy. Bournival added hyperlinks in the messages to send traffic to special
landing pages he rented at Dr. Fatburn's 2002marketing.com site and at a couple other sites
Bournival and Hawke had previously set up with an ISP in China. Bournival paid around five
dollars per bottle and sold them for twenty-five dollars each, plus a hefty seven-dollar
shipping charge.

Since the Certified Natural ad was in HTML format, the language used to render web
pages, it was relatively big, so some recipients might not be able to view it properly in
their email. So Bournival decided he needed a plain-text version as well. He had always
admired Hawke's copywriting skills, and in July he asked his mentor to pen a new Maxaman
ad.

At the time, Hawke was on cruise control. Through much of 2002 he had been
lackadaisically spamming diet pills and the Banned CD and coasting off the commissions from
Bournival's pheromone sales. The two had long ago agreed not to encroach on each other's
product lines, and Hawke considered Bournival's move into penis pills a minor violation of
that deal. Hawke had abandoned V-Force after a couple mailings in February 2002 and had
sporadically spammed Pro-Erex, another herbal Viagra product, for a few months after that.
Nonetheless, he was flattered by the request and ended up producing a gem of an ad for
Bournival. Hawke's ad opened with the provocative line, "Sex is like fixing your '69
Corvette...":

Hawke's ad for Maxaman promised full refunds to users who didn't see two inches of
growth. He also wrote some bogus testimonials, such as one from "Lauren from Newark NJ," who
said that her boyfriend had started taking Maxaman when she was away on vacation. "When I
got back a week and a half later, he told me he had a surprise for me. And boy what a
surprise it was!"

Hawke concluded the ad by inviting men to give their mates a similar treat: "Think about
how you'll feel when she cries out your name during sex, or after it's over and she hugs you
like she's never hugged you before. So place your order now! She will love you for
it."

Spammers had been hawking penis pills for several years before Bournival discovered the
niche. But he found that the marketplace was nowhere near saturation. Orders for Maxaman
started pouring in, with response rates running near three per thousand emails delivered.
Bournival decided to hit hard, and he mailed run after run of both the HTML and plain-text
ads.

By the end of the summer, he could barely fill the orders fast enough, and nearly every
inch of floor space in his mother's apartment was occupied with cartons of pills and packing
material. He hired his 26-year-old stepsister to help him with shipping and paid her
seventy-five cents for each order she packed. It worked out to about twenty dollars per
hour. Sometimes his mother pitched in as well.

In October 2002, Bournival added a third Maxaman ad to his spam runs. He stole the ad
copy—which opened with the question, "Want a big penis?"—from a message that arrived in his
in-box from a spammer advertising Vig-RX, a competing penis-enlargement product from Leading
Edge Marketing, a firm based in the Bahamas that also did business as Albion Medical.

The ad featured some of the most audacious language of any spam he'd seen. It described
Vig-RX as a "doctor-approved pill" that provided "up to three full inches" of penis growth.
"You'll radiate confidence and success whenever you enter a locker room, and other men will
look at you with real envy," promised the Vig-RX ad. The spam then graphically detailed how
women enjoy large penises, but concluded with this warning: "Remember, a penis larger than
9" may be too large for most women. But if for some reason you need even more, it is
possible for you to safely continue taking Vig-Rx. The choice is up to you..."

In his haste to try out the Vig-RX ad copy in his own Maxaman spams, Bournival neglected
to replace all occurrences of the word "Vig-RX" and even left in place a hyperlink to the
Vig-RX spammer's web site.

But it hardly mattered. Orders for Maxaman continued to roll in. With his penis-pill
profits, Bournival upgraded his network connection, adding a T1 line to the apartment, which
enabled him to pump out ads even faster. He also bought his first car, a used Dodge Intrepid
that he paid for with $5,000 in cash. For years he had been addicted to car-racing video
games, and he finally had his own wheels. The Intrepid would be the first of a collection of
muscle cars Bournival would buy with his spam income.

Meanwhile, Hawke devoted a good chunk of time during the summer of 2002 to updating the
The Spambook
, which he renamed
The Bulkbook
and
sold for thirty dollars. The revised edition included a new section, "The Mindset," that
described the temperament required to be a successful spammer:

According to
The Bulkbook
, losing a site due to spamming complaints
was the biggest problem facing bulkers: