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SEC Institutes Proceedings Against Rodona Garst 65

Hayzeus writes: "The SEC has instituted administrative proceedings against Super Spammer Rodona Garst. For those of you who don't know already, Ms. Garst was allegedly hacked by someone furious that she had forged his domain name on repeated spam mailings. Lots of pretty embarrassing stuff (including photos!) were subsequently posted to the net. The original site is down, but the link above should work."
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SEC Institutes Proceedings Against Rodona Garst

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  • As a small business owner in the Internet information propogation industry, and like many of the members of Slashdot, I hate SPAM. I would like to submit a list of anti-SPAM proponents, in the form of a Slashdot thread. So, if you support the prosecution of SPAMers, please post a response to this message containing a valid email address so that we may avoid any chance of identity theft. Thank you for your help. Down with SPAM!
  • by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Monday August 05, 2002 @03:17PM (#4014179) Homepage
    An honest to goodness spammer led astray to the darkside of stock market manipulation, which happens to be very illegal...

    Oh I shall be so upset when they are rotting in jail, or bankrupted for the rest of their natural life- I just don't know how I will manage to console myself...

    Whoooohhooo! Yes! Going dowwwwwwn! ;-)

    • Yeah, it's hard to tell when you cross the line between immoral and illegal. Spamming is just immoral, securites fraud is illegal. But what is spamming messages that are securities fraud? I guess Rodona found out.
  • Man he is good, check this out. Its a picture of the spammer! Breast Size [deekoo.net]
    • Wow. There is a god. I think I'm going to send that pic to all my friends with the message "Here's the douchebag who's been sending porno spam to all your kids. If you see her on the street, be sure to point and laugh."

      This picture of a spammer in action [deekoo.net] was pretty kuehl too. note the URL in action there; i wonder if that was how the dude hacked'em. I assume it's some "unicode-bypass-of-IE-security-just-in-case-Micros oft-can-someday-use-the-egregious-security-hole-to -skrew-a-competitor-exploit" type of thing. Note also the non-dotted ip format. I've seen that in action by spammers before, but I've never bothered to figure out how the ip is packed into an integer (never mind why browsers bother to interpret it). Anyone... Beuler?

      (like your sig too)

      • I was more amused by the fact that she has no "Buddies Online". Strange that. ;)

        The odd URL is actually http://198.78.142.6/wawilsonrivermort.html [198.78.142.6] by the way, but didn't respond for me.

      • to change 98.78.142.6, fFirst you convert each number to binary. this is decidely NOT correct, but to give you the idea, it will look like 010011.001100.010100.000110 then take out the dots: 010011001100010100000110 fFinally, convert this back to a standard decimal number, which will be something like 4673828.

        if you dont understand binary and base-conversions, fForget it.
        • Yeah, or just (A*2^24) + (B*2^16) + (C*2^8) + D, for IP A.B.C.D.

          I think there's another variation in which one specifies the numbers in octal...
      • Note also the non-dotted ip format. I've seen that in action by spammers before, but I've never bothered to figure out how the ip is packed into an integer (never mind why browsers bother to interpret it).

        Although someone posted instructions on how to convert it (it's just a decimal representation of a 32-bit number), there's an online calculator [stamey.nu] here for the lazy.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 05, 2002 @03:24PM (#4014230)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re:wow (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Honestly, if she can not continue spamming, what is she going to do? Freakshows and haunted houses are not the most popular entertainment on fun fairs these days.
      • I work at a haunted house around Halloween. Even we don't employ anyone that ugly.

        Tim
      • don't worry. the unemployment office wont have to pay her. either she'll go to jail (actually, not very likely), or she'll just get a stiff fFine. to pay the fFine, she'll just send out 5 times as much spam.

        really, this is good and all. but knowledge sticks. she probably wont, you know, stop using the big bad internet, eh
    • I can see she'll have no future in face-to-face customer interaction.

      You think face-to-face is bad? Pray she doesn't turn around. [deekoo.net]

      -
  • by wompser ( 165008 ) on Monday August 05, 2002 @03:30PM (#4014266)
    I thought I would do what I considered my duty, so I called one of the listed contact numbers for Rodona to let her know how I felt about her activities. To my suprise I got an answering machine. Thinking I would see what happened I pushed a coulple of random buttons on my phone's keypad, and suddenly I was granted access to the voicemail! She currently has two messages, one from who is apparently her husband ("Hi honey, you there?") and someone named Tonya. I tried it twice, and it worked both times!

    Do your duty as a fellow slashdotter and call this spammer and leave her a message, or listen to her messages!

    I'm not kidding, this really works! (or at least it does until 10000 slashdotters call her phone...) I hope it is still her number, "Tonya" left a message for "Robin" not "Radona" so the number may have changed.

    Anyway, it is this number: +1 (931) 431-6711 Rodona Garst 1226 Cobblestone Ln Clarksville TN 37042-5890
    • This works great until she either checks caller ID or get the phone company to start tracking harassing calls.

      Either way, I smell a lawsuit against Slashdot for incitement.
      • to start tracking harassing calls.
        Of course, it's only "harassment" if you call repeatedly and wantonly.

        If you want to be an ass legally, just call once. If everyon calls once, all (rand(bignum)) of us, it'll do the job you want better thatn 3 people calling hundereds of times.

        Of course, once we reaize that we're supposed to be adults here, we might find a more mature way of leveling justice.
      • phone company to start tracking harassing calls.

        I can just picture the phone company tracks all the source phone numbers...
        and reports them to Rodona...
        by postal mail...
        one phone number per envelope.

        -
    • In the first place, this could very well be someone else's answering machine you're fucking with. Secondly, interfering with this person's communications is some violation of federal statute, under wire fraud, I believe.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        yeah, I just called to apologize for fucking with her answering machine...
    • That number belongs to a jeffery and robin mallory!!! You are harassing someone who has nothing to do with this. None of the other numbers are correct either. Check on http://www.anywho.com/ and see for yourself. They have probably been changed. Rodona Garst in not listed in the whitepages either.
  • Heh. This [deekoo.net] must be the person who received literally thousands and thousands of mortgage leads from me. The form fields are very familiar to me. I was bored one day, so I wrote a little app that I would plug those mortgage spam sign-up forms into, and it would randomly generate names, addresses and phone numbers and repeatedly submit the form, with a short, random delay in between submissions. I remember once letting it run up over 5,000 submissions to the same site. Not that I cared that they knew my data was fake, I just wanted to make it impossible to find real data in that mess. I should try to dig that little app up...

  • Number of Freckles on Rodona Garst Ass [deekoo.net]

    Rodona Garst Breast Size [deekoo.net]

    A Date With A Spam Queen (Shary Valentine) [deekoo.net]

    Though frankly if she gets you off, you're officially desperate!

    Ali

    • She doesn't look so bad in the one where she's flashing her breasts. She looks pretty good, really. I dunno, maybe if your main familiarity with women is from your 10gigs of pr0n, then you might think that Rodona is ugly. But she's even a little bit above average, I think.

      C'mon. Many of you have gilfriends that aren't that good looking.

      Make fun of her for being an evil spammer/password thief/pump-and-dumper and for being such an idiot. She deserves that. She even deserves thousands of people looking at her titties (and somewhat flabby ass). It's more brutal when you fairly and accurately ridicule someone. For example, the fact that she has those stupid inspirational posters on her wall clearly indicates that she's sub-human.

  • by flonker ( 526111 ) on Monday August 05, 2002 @04:28PM (#4014596)
    The new goatse:

    Rodona Garst [deekoo.net]!

    (Ugly, flashing the camera. You have been warned.)
  • Who looked at this and thought "So, this is what happens when one script kiddie fights another script kiddie?"

    I found the web page embarressing to all people involved.

  • Well well...
    Have we gotten this low?
    I guess so =)
    It's only soft anyways
    God only knows what that guy did encounter on those spammers machines =)

    Can't someone hack Jennifer and Melinda Gates' boxes?!

    =)
  • The SEC also went after Rice, the guy that hired her. Everything got covered.

    I've seen attempts to sue spammers, to complain to them, to flood their phones, to complain to local police/attorney general. Nothing does much...except this.

    Seems that the first effective clean sweep against a spammer that I've ever seen -- and it was done by a black hat. Frankly, I'm quite pleased.

    Anyway, that should give others a bit of incentive to actively counter spam...
    • Well, it's a bit of "street justice", that's for sure. These people make their living by breaking the inability of "The System" to protect people from rulebreakers, so this sorry hag gets about as much sympathy as a bully who's just been pantsed.
    • 0x0d0a didst speak thusly:

      The SEC also went after Rice, the guy that hired her. Everything got covered. I've seen attempts to sue spammers, to complain to them, to flood their phones, to complain to local police/attorney general. Nothing does much...except this. Seems that the first effective clean sweep against a spammer that I've ever seen -- and it was done by a black hat. Frankly, I'm quite pleased.

      Actually, not quite the first clean sweep...

      The first clean sweep I am aware of, or rather clue-by-fouring en masse, was of a particularly notorious spammer (both Usenet and email) by name of "Krazy" Kevin Lipsitz (notation in the Spam Timeline here: http://keithlynch.net/spamline.html [keithlynch.net]).

      Krazy Kevin was one of the parties that directly lead to confirmation of accounts--he used to use Compuserve throwaway accounts in particular, as I recall, to promote his magazine scheme.

      It came out after a while on many net.abuse forums that not only was he spamming, but he also failed to deliver magazines...

      Eventually the State of New York spanked him in probably one of the first court precedents in regards to spam. (Reference here: http://www.oag.state.ny.us/internet/litigation/leb edeff.html [state.ny.us])

      This all happened around '96 or '97...Krazy Kev was busted around 1997ish.

      "Krazy Kevin" no longer is spamming, and apparently makes much of his living now being a professional gourmand (he apparently holds a world's record for consuming the most amount of pickles in a five-minute span, and is a regular contestant at the Nathan's hot-dog eating contest)...at least it's a bit more honest a way of life than spamming, I suppose. :) (More about Krazy Kev going honest, in a sense: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/WolfFiles/wolffi les204.html [go.com]) Still selling magazines too, but hopefully people get them now :)

      Sanford, aka "Spamford", Wallace also was whacked into sense between being sued by both AOL *and* Compuserve (pre-merger) and getting ordered not to spam them (info on that lawsuit here: http://www.netlitigation.com/netlitigation/cases/c ompucase.htm [netlitigation.com])--and having literally been nearly banned from the Internet entirely and causing one of the major "backbone" sites of the Internet to be nearly universally shunned as well (the Agis.net UDP around 1996--Wallace and the nancy.com spammers were almost completely responsible) after it ended up being the last site on the Internet to deal with him...

      In fact, Sanford Wallace has the rather dubious distinction of not only having been the reason behind many states' proposed antispam statutes, not only does he have the dubious distinction of having also been a junk faxer before he went into spamming and being almost singlehandedly responsible for the US law prohibiting junk faxing, but is singlehandedly responsible for much if not most of the early case law in regards to spamming...

      After having realised the errors of his ways around 1998 or so, he started running an opt-in mail service for a while and (in a theme that seems to recur among reformed spammers) also apparently does entertainment, specifically, he's a DJ (more info here: http://www.canismajor.demon.co.uk/antispam/sanford .htm [demon.co.uk]; info regarding his present company here: http://www.annonline.com/interviews/970522/biograp hy.html [annonline.com])...

      (Now, mind, I've just included the first two cases I can recall off the top of my head involving people being sued directly for stuff related to spamming...)

  • Gimp + pr0n + Rodona Garst pic = 1 even more screwed spammer! (pun accidentally
    intended!)
  • Could anybody please explain to me in simple terms what these SEC adminstrative proceedings mean. I looked at the SEC page referred to but I didn't understand it. I'd be happy for an explanation understandable for somebody who is not familiar with legalize.

    virve
    --
    • The story as I understand it is that Rodentia was hired by Mark Rice to spam for certain stocks. When Rice wrote the spam text, he bragged about his (bogus) surefire history at picking stocks, and made other possibly false claims about the stocks and his investment prowess. In addition, the spam did not disclose the fact that the people doing this "promotion" stood to profit based upon reaction to the spam. There are a few standard disclaimers required by law, which you'll find at the bottom of legitimate analyses released by legitimate banks and investment firms. Forward-looking statements, yadda yadda.

      The whole thing is known as a "pump 'n dump" scam; i.e. you buy a lot of shares in the company, pump up the stock price through some fraudulent or misrepresentative means, then dump the shares for a profit. It can also be done in reverse, by shorting a large number of shares and then issuing a bogus negative press release to drive the stock price down - look at what a single negative press release did to shares of ImClone, the company Martha Stewart got caught up in, and you'll get a feel for what a single statement can do to a stock (though obviously the ImClone release was valid). Typically the perpetrator will target a company you've never heard of, whose stock is trading OTC for fractions of a cent per share; that way the up-front cost is low and the risk is negligible if anything backfires.

      It's very illegal, and this is what the SEC is going after them for. While the phenomenon was much more widespread during the dot com stock boom, it's still going on today and likely always will be. If you receive "pump 'n dump" spam, please forward it to enforcement [at] sec.gov.

      Shaun
  • I advocate searching out opt-in spam lists for junk snail-mail, and putting her home address into them. When she needs a wheelbarrow to bring in the mail, I think it might just do "Man in the Wilderness" justice.
  • Absolutely Fried Chicken Amazing job.

    My hat is off to this guy for the website displaying all the content off the machines.

    Postively some of the best entertainment I have had all week!

    Hilarious!

    PS: Thank You Uncle Bill for such a Crappy OS from which I would never have had this pleasure....
    Hack

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