TragicWhiteKnight: Everyone knows expecting penis pills to give you more than a temporary boost is stupid, right? So, it's shockingly how many people are willing to throw money away, not just on pills themselves, but on ones with no track record/ingredients/contact details...
From http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59907,00.html
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire -- A security flaw at a website operated by the
purveyors of penis-enlargement pills has provided the world with a depressing
answer to the question: Who in their right mind would buy something from a
spammer?
An order log left exposed at one of Amazing Internet Products' websites revealed
that, over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and
placed orders for the company's Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers
ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle.
Do the math and you begin to understand why spammers are willing to put up with
the wrath of spam recipients, Internet service providers and federal regulators.
Since July 4, Amazing Internet Products would have grossed more than half a
million dollars from Goringly.biz, one of several sites operated by the company
to hawk its penis pills.
Among the people who responded in July to Amazing's spam, which bore the subject
line, "Make your penis HUGE," was the manager of a $6 billion mutual fund, who
ordered two bottles of Pinacle to be shipped to his Park Avenue office in New
York City. A restaurateur in Boulder, Colorado, requested four bottles. The
president of a California firm that sells airplane parts and is active in the
local Rotary Club gave out his American Express card number to pay for six
bottles, or $300 worth, of Pinacle. The coach of an elementary school lacrosse
club in Pennsylvania ordered four bottles of the pills.
Other customers included the head of a credit-repair firm, a chiropractor, a
veterinarian, a landscaper and several people from the military. Numerous women
also were evidently among Amazing Internet's customers.
All were evidently undaunted by the fact that Amazing's order site contained no
phone number, mailing address or e-mail address for contacting the company. Nor
were they seemingly concerned that their order data, including their credit card
info, addresses and phone numbers, were transmitted to the site without the
encryption used by most legitimate online stores.
"There was a picture on the top of the page that said, 'As Seen on TV,' and I
guess that made me think it was legit," said a San Diego salesman who ordered
two bottles of Pinacle in early July. The man, who asked not to be named, said
he has yet to receive his pills, despite the site's promise to fill the order in
five days.
A former employee of Amazing Internet Products, who requested anonymity,
reported the company's tendency to expose order log files to Wired News. The
file was viewable by anyone with a Web browser who truncated one of the Internet
addresses published by the company.
Besides legitimate orders, Amazing Internet's log file also contained numerous
complaints from spam recipients, who used the order form to register their
unhappiness at the site's lack of a proper list-removal option.
Faith York, a rehabilitation counselor in Maine, left Amazing Internet a few
choice words last month after an e-mail advertising Pinacle pills slipped
through AOL's spam filters and landed in her 10-year-old son's inbox. In a
telephone interview last week, York said she lost her temper when she discovered
that neither the e-mail nor the ordering site included any means of contacting
the company.
"The only way I could send them information was by making up an order, and in
the spaces for address and whatnot I described my discontent at them sending my
son that kind of e-mail," York said.
The registration record for the site, and the ones for the dozens of other sites
used by Amazing Internet Products, provide little help in tracking down the
company's owners. The domain records typically list a fictitious registrant and
a post office box in Manchester, New Hampshire, along with a nonworking phone
number and e-mail address.
To further throw people off its tracks, Amazing Internet and its affiliates send
out their loads of junk e-mail using fake return addresses, or the real return
address of an innocent third party.
But records on file with the New Hampshire secretary of state show that Braden
Bournival, a 19-year-old high-school dropout who is also listed as vice
president of the New Hampshire Chess Association, owns Amazing Internet
Products.
Bournival refused repeated requests for interviews about his business. When
approached for comment at a chess tournament in Merrimack, New Hampshire, last
month, Bournival, who is a national-master-caliber player, ran away from a Wired
News reporter.
The registered agent for Amazing Internet Products, Mark Wright of Manchester
law firm McLane, Graf, Raulerson, & Middleton, also declined to be interviewed.
Amazing Internet leases several thousand square feet of office space at the
Tower Mill Center on Bedford Street in Manchester, where, according to the
former employee, Bournival's teenage sister fills padded envelopes with bottles
of Pinacle and ships them off to customers.
An investigation (registration to Salon.com required) last month revealed that
Bournival's mentor and business partner is Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a chess expert
and former neo-Nazi leader who turned to the spam business in 1999 after it
became public that his father was Jewish.
By all appearances, Bournival's and Hawke's spam business is highly profitable.
Amazing Internet pays a supplier around $5 per bottle of pills, and gives
affiliates who send spam on its behalf about $10 per order, said the former
associate. That leaves plenty of room for a tidy profit in the low-overhead spam
business.
But does the stuff work? Amazing Internet's spams make this promise to Pinacle
users: "Realistically, you can grow up to 3 FULL INCHES IN LENGTH."
The Federal Trade Commission said there is no proof that the pills work as
advertised. But the FTC does not have the resources to press a case against such
companies, according to spokesman Richard Cleland.
Earlier this year, Joe Miksch, a columnist for the Fairfield County Weekly,
published a humorous account of what happened when he took Pinacle for 30 days.
It went something like this: "Day one: No change. Day two: No change. Day three:
No change. Days four through 30: See above."
But according to the former associate, Amazing Internet Products makes good on
its enlargement guarantee, and -- poor security precautions aside -- protects
customers' data.
"I don't know if the stuff works. But Brad has a weird sense of ethics. He would
never use a stolen credit card, and he honors requests for refunds," he said.
To that end, one of Amazing's websites, which has since gone offline, listed a
toll-free customer service number -- 800-576-4044. The company's PayPal account
shows two e-mail addresses: vze3c9sk@verizon.net and frappe_boy@yahoo.com.
From http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59907,00.html
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire -- A security flaw at a website operated by the
purveyors of penis-enlargement pills has provided the world with a depressing
answer to the question: Who in their right mind would buy something from a
spammer?
An order log left exposed at one of Amazing Internet Products' websites revealed
that, over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and
placed orders for the company's Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers
ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle.
Do the math and you begin to understand why spammers are willing to put up with
the wrath of spam recipients, Internet service providers and federal regulators.
Since July 4, Amazing Internet Products would have grossed more than half a
million dollars from Goringly.biz, one of several sites operated by the company
to hawk its penis pills.
Among the people who responded in July to Amazing's spam, which bore the subject
line, "Make your penis HUGE," was the manager of a $6 billion mutual fund, who
ordered two bottles of Pinacle to be shipped to his Park Avenue office in New
York City. A restaurateur in Boulder, Colorado, requested four bottles. The
president of a California firm that sells airplane parts and is active in the
local Rotary Club gave out his American Express card number to pay for six
bottles, or $300 worth, of Pinacle. The coach of an elementary school lacrosse
club in Pennsylvania ordered four bottles of the pills.
Other customers included the head of a credit-repair firm, a chiropractor, a
veterinarian, a landscaper and several people from the military. Numerous women
also were evidently among Amazing Internet's customers.
All were evidently undaunted by the fact that Amazing's order site contained no
phone number, mailing address or e-mail address for contacting the company. Nor
were they seemingly concerned that their order data, including their credit card
info, addresses and phone numbers, were transmitted to the site without the
encryption used by most legitimate online stores.
"There was a picture on the top of the page that said, 'As Seen on TV,' and I
guess that made me think it was legit," said a San Diego salesman who ordered
two bottles of Pinacle in early July. The man, who asked not to be named, said
he has yet to receive his pills, despite the site's promise to fill the order in
five days.
A former employee of Amazing Internet Products, who requested anonymity,
reported the company's tendency to expose order log files to Wired News. The
file was viewable by anyone with a Web browser who truncated one of the Internet
addresses published by the company.
Besides legitimate orders, Amazing Internet's log file also contained numerous
complaints from spam recipients, who used the order form to register their
unhappiness at the site's lack of a proper list-removal option.
Faith York, a rehabilitation counselor in Maine, left Amazing Internet a few
choice words last month after an e-mail advertising Pinacle pills slipped
through AOL's spam filters and landed in her 10-year-old son's inbox. In a
telephone interview last week, York said she lost her temper when she discovered
that neither the e-mail nor the ordering site included any means of contacting
the company.
"The only way I could send them information was by making up an order, and in
the spaces for address and whatnot I described my discontent at them sending my
son that kind of e-mail," York said.
The registration record for the site, and the ones for the dozens of other sites
used by Amazing Internet Products, provide little help in tracking down the
company's owners. The domain records typically list a fictitious registrant and
a post office box in Manchester, New Hampshire, along with a nonworking phone
number and e-mail address.
To further throw people off its tracks, Amazing Internet and its affiliates send
out their loads of junk e-mail using fake return addresses, or the real return
address of an innocent third party.
But records on file with the New Hampshire secretary of state show that Braden
Bournival, a 19-year-old high-school dropout who is also listed as vice
president of the New Hampshire Chess Association, owns Amazing Internet
Products.
Bournival refused repeated requests for interviews about his business. When
approached for comment at a chess tournament in Merrimack, New Hampshire, last
month, Bournival, who is a national-master-caliber player, ran away from a Wired
News reporter.
The registered agent for Amazing Internet Products, Mark Wright of Manchester
law firm McLane, Graf, Raulerson, & Middleton, also declined to be interviewed.
Amazing Internet leases several thousand square feet of office space at the
Tower Mill Center on Bedford Street in Manchester, where, according to the
former employee, Bournival's teenage sister fills padded envelopes with bottles
of Pinacle and ships them off to customers.
An investigation (registration to Salon.com required) last month revealed that
Bournival's mentor and business partner is Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a chess expert
and former neo-Nazi leader who turned to the spam business in 1999 after it
became public that his father was Jewish.
By all appearances, Bournival's and Hawke's spam business is highly profitable.
Amazing Internet pays a supplier around $5 per bottle of pills, and gives
affiliates who send spam on its behalf about $10 per order, said the former
associate. That leaves plenty of room for a tidy profit in the low-overhead spam
business.
But does the stuff work? Amazing Internet's spams make this promise to Pinacle
users: "Realistically, you can grow up to 3 FULL INCHES IN LENGTH."
The Federal Trade Commission said there is no proof that the pills work as
advertised. But the FTC does not have the resources to press a case against such
companies, according to spokesman Richard Cleland.
Earlier this year, Joe Miksch, a columnist for the Fairfield County Weekly,
published a humorous account of what happened when he took Pinacle for 30 days.
It went something like this: "Day one: No change. Day two: No change. Day three:
No change. Days four through 30: See above."
But according to the former associate, Amazing Internet Products makes good on
its enlargement guarantee, and -- poor security precautions aside -- protects
customers' data.
"I don't know if the stuff works. But Brad has a weird sense of ethics. He would
never use a stolen credit card, and he honors requests for refunds," he said.
To that end, one of Amazing's websites, which has since gone offline, listed a
toll-free customer service number -- 800-576-4044. The company's PayPal account
shows two e-mail addresses: vze3c9sk@verizon.net and frappe_boy@yahoo.com.
