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CIS Internet Services, an Internet Service Provider based in Clinton, Iowa has successfully sued a Florida man for a record $11.2 billion. The suit sought damages for Internet spam emails and illegal advertising.
The man, James McCalla, was found guilty of sending over 280 million spam emails and messages to CIS customers. The emails touted such common spam advertisements as mortgage companies, debt services, pornographic and gambling websites, and others. The US District Judge Charles Wolle presented his judgment late in December of 2005 and has also declared that McCalla cannot use the Internet at all for three years.
The charges against McCalla amounted to what many see as a gross violation of consumer fraud laws.
While the laws on spam remain to be outlined, there are currently laws in the US that make it illegal to send dishonest spam . Dishonest spam includes not having a correct return address, hiding a company''s domain name, mis-using a company''s name, or having a misleading subject line. Unsolicited legal spam is still a nuisance to many, however.
The owner of CIS Internet Services Robert Kramer also sued several other companies that were later dropped from the initial complaint. These companies included Cash Link Systems of Florida, AMP Dollar Savings Inc. of Arizona, and TEI Marketing Group Inc. of Florida.
Part of CIS Internet Services'' lawsuit said that many of the companies used false return addresses with the "cis.net" domain name, targeting CIS Internet Services and overloading their servers, causing outages to millions of customers in Illinois and Iowa.
The ruling is largely seen as symbolic, however, as Kramer will likely not see any money from McCalla. The lawsuit is indicative of ways in which companies and individuals can fight illegal spam and has put McCalla out of business, at least for a while.