Kramer wins another spam judgment; more than $236 million

Herald Staff

October 04, 2008 02:13 am

— CLINTON — A Clinton-based Internet service provider has received more than $236 million in judgment against an illegal spammer.
Robert W. Kramer III, owner and operator of CIS Internet Services, received the $236,480,660 judgment against two individual defendants, Henry Perez and Suzanne Bartok of Arizona, following a trial for violation of Iowa’s anti-spam statute. The verdict was entered on Sept. 30 in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Iowa, Davenport Division, by Judge John A. Jarvey.
“The court finds that Kramer has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that the spam e-mails originated with Perez and Bartok. The e-mails, which were unsolicited advertisements, did not identify the point of origin or the transmission path and did not provide a ‘readily identifiable’ e-mail address to which the recipient could send a request for declining further e-mails,” the court order states. “As such, the court finds in favor of Kramer and against Perez and Bartok.”
The court found that husband and wife Perez and Bartok sent more than 23 million e-mails advertising loan refinancing services to CIS computers in 2003. The judgment is unique in that corporate officers Perez and Bartok were held personally liable and not protected by the limited liability of their corporation.
The court found that “While Bartok may not have been the ‘person’ hitting the ‘send’ button to create the spam e-mail, she was half owner of a business whose sole source of income was predicated on illegal spamming.”
“I’m very pleased with this substantial ruling,” Kramer said. “I hope it sends the appropriate message that spamming will not be tolerated. There will likely always be spammers and spam, but this ruling makes it clear they risk an economic death penalty and exposure to public ridicule.”
In January 2006, Kramer was awarded an $11.2 billion judgment against Miami spammer James McCalla, who was accused of sending millions of illegal spam e-mails advertising mortgage and debt consolidation services. At that time, U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Wolle also granted CIS’s request for injunctive relief, preventing McCalla from illegally spamming any Internet user, regardless of the user’s ISP, and prohibited McCalla from accessing the Internet for a period of three years.
In the lawsuit, Kramer established that during 2003, McCalla sent more than 280 million illegal spam e-mail messages into CIS’s computer network. Under the Iowa statute that was in effect at the time McCalla was spamming, Kramer was entitled to $10 per illegal e-mail.
Kramer also earned a total of more than $1 billion in a judgment against three spammers in 2005.
CIS, based in Clinton, started in 1996 as a dial-up ISP serving customers in eastern Iowa and western Illinois, from Dubuque to Keokuk. CIS offered the first Web connection in dozens of communities and is the only high-speed service available to many rural homes and businesses in Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois. Today, CIS provides high-speed DSL, wireless broadband, T1 replacements, digital dial-up and virtual Web hosting.