Spam king sets up in New Zealand?

13.03.2006
An unsolicited bulk email campaign for broadband and telephone calling rates may have flushed out a notorious U.S. spammer from a low-profile existence in Auckland.

Contacted by Computerworld, Brendan Battles of Auckland denies that he is the same person as U.S. spammer Brendan Battles. He also denied spamming in New Zealand, even though Computerworld rang him on a number supplied in one of the spam messages.

Amongst those spammed were former Computerworld editor Matt Cooney and Orcon network manager Craig Whitmore who also tracked down Battles. The spam was hawking Compass Communications Ltd.'s Wired Country Direct wireless broadband plans, as well as Telecom UBS Ltd. and TelstraClear DSL Ltd. Battles put his Whangapararoa and Telecom mobile phone number on that message, as well as on another spam for national and international call rates.

New Zealand regional and other Usenet newsgroups were also spammed by Battles.

All the services in the spam are supplied through Auckland ISP Compass Communications, where Battles currently works in the sales department.

Battles used Microsoft Word to create the spam messages, and left both his name and that of his employer in the document properties tags.