Fear and Loathing on the Spam-pain Trail -- Pt II

Part II – Spamset Boulevard.

So what does the Demesne that Drive-by Persiflage Built at 8939 S. Sepulveda Boulevard -- that little, Cayman Islands/Switzerland bower of secrets and neutrality, where Namecheap.com plies their trade -- look like from God’s-eye-view.

Like this.


Honestly, looks kind of like a shit-hole to me.

Standard-issue office building at the ass-end of nowhere, with a commanding view of seven lanes of traffic.

Ratty landscaping, no local greensward, commerce, cuisine or culture, and abutting blocks of empty lots and airport runways.

In other words, a den of inequity right out of a fucking Jim Thompson novel.

The free version of GoogleEarth doesn’t give me KeyHole satellite pix or thermal imaging, but from the outside it sure as hell looks like the perfect setup for another low-rent, phone-rich, furniture-poor boiler room for sheltering digital grifters who make a living spamming, scamming and making their monthly nut from bilking old ladies.

But what more can we learn about 8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd in Westchester, CA.?

Other than its phone number (which is 661-310-2107.)

Well, that’s the number for an outfit called “BGFWeb.com”

Who has servers located in Parsippany, New Jersey … Tampa, Florida…Oh yes, and at a place called “ThePlanet” in Dallas, Texas.

Ahhh. I love it when circuits are closed.

But what else?

Well, this is where understanding timelines, and knowing that when money changes hands there must always be a point-of-contact and a paper-trail, comes in handy.

Because when the point-of-contact changes, the players must step briefly into the light and to draft a new agreement.

So in this context, it's interesting to note that this domain name -- “theonlinebusinesssystem.com” -- was created on eNom, Inc, by the purveyors of whatever it is this site purports to sell on May 20, 2004.

But who are they and what do they sell?

Well, cutting to the chase, they sell Herbalife.

Actually they want YOU to sell Herbalife, and buy all the packets and potions and promotions to get your franchise up and hopping as you try to sell your way out of the debt your initial “investment” has created.

This testimonial from Scam.com:

Online Business Systems is a back office system used by some Herbalife distributors. I would stay far away unless you have a great desire to sell Herbalife products and if you want to do that, then bypass Online Business Systems completely and just sell the product without their expensive back office. I've known a number of people who used this system and some did OK with it, but generally most of them felt it was too expensive. Many that I knew personally who went this way felt pressured to buy their way into a supervisor position and to purchase expensive business leads to jumpstart their business.

So good luck with that.

But it is not quite true that “theonlinebusinesssystem.com” was created on eNom, Inc. in May, 2004. It would be much truthier to say that is was transferred there from this company – “Wild West Domains, Inc. A Go Daddy Company” – in Scottsdale, Arizona.

And while it lay in gentle repose between the supple breasts of “Go Daddy”, the provenance of “theonlinebusinesssystem.com” was not Namecheap-protected.

Instead, it was registered to these people:

Networx Online

At this address:

27702 Crown Valley Pkwy
Suite #D-4, #127
Ladera Ranch, CA 92694

At which both the Administrative and Technical contact person was this guy:

John Rydell, who is also the President and co-founder of Networx.

He is also a principal in this company -- Rydell Development Company, LLC.

And he was also, at that time, the registrant-of-record of “theonlinebusinesssystem.com”.

What makes it even more interesting is that this email solicitation urging someone to get with the program and buy their “Decision Packs” – an Herbalife Thingie -- was generated from the global HQ of Online Marketing Solutions, which is located here:

27702 Crown Valley Pkwy, Suite #D-4, #127
Ladera Ranch, CA 92694

Which is identical to the address of Networx Online, operated by John Rydell.

Who registered the domain once as himself with Go Daddy, but then moved it over to the much-more-lead-shielded universe of Namecheap.com.

But why?

Well having pushed into the pudding this far just for my own entertainment and edification, it seems I stumbled across a long-standing kerfuffle.

It seems that Netwrox Online had a complaint lodged against it at Scamfraudalert.Com.

And it goes a little something like this…

“Networx Online claim to be a hosting company but also serve as a MLM. They are associated with HerbaLife and perhaps doing the Marketing of HerbaLife under aliases.

Complaint Description
Networx Online advertising practices is suspect at glance, deceptive in nature, and not transperent in representing themselves or their client. They lead you to believe that you are actually applying for a job when in essence you are applying to join some program in anticipation you will make MILLIONS.

Customer’s Desired Settlement
I like to see the company be more transparent in representing their CLIENTS and THEMSELVES. Say what they are doing and WHO behalf they are working on.”

Oh my!

The company rejoinders with this:

Company’s Final Response
The domain for www.theonlinebusiness.com is not owned by Networx Online. Feel free to check any of the WHOIS listings.

Oh my...my. Well, that’s not exactly true, is it?

Scamfraudalert.Com closes the deal here:

Networx Online have admitted that Herbalife is a client of theirs. At first, they denied having any doing with Herbalife.. Please see related link.
http://networxonline.com/; Click on overview and see clients listing.

Networx Online creates and maintains Online Marketing Systems for the network marketing and direct sales industries.

Maybe kinda sorta explains the sudden -- perhaps even...headlong? -- flight from a Domain Motel where one is known by name, to another, seamier joint on Sepulveda Boulevard, where everyone gets “Eyes Wide Shut” masks and a trenchcoat and goes by the monicker “WhoisGuard”…

(Gentleman, I'd like to introduce man from Go Daddy who is joinin' us this year in the philosophy department at the University of Walamaloo.

(Everyone) G'day!

Hello.

John Rydell, Bruce. John Rydell, Bruce. John Rydell, Bruce.

Is your name not Bruce?

No, it's John.

That's going to cause a little confusion.

Mind if we call you "Bruce" to keep it clear?

Gentlemen, I think we better start the faculty meeting. Before we start, though, I'd like to ask the padre for a prayer.

Oh Lord, we beseech Thee, Amen!!

Amen!

Crack two! (Bottles opening)

Now I call upon Bruce to officially welcome Mr. Rydell to the philosophy faculty.

I'd like to welcome the Go Daddy bastard to God's own Earth, and remind him that we don't like stuck-up sticky-bates here.

Hear, hear! Well spoken, Bruce!)

And (to switch from Python to Casablanca in honor of its winning Best Screenplay of All Time) let us say the door is watched by an enormous, sweaty man known as Senor Namecheap Ferrari. Proprietor of “The Blue parrot”, he is always resplendent in a white suit and black fez, and always packs a flyswatter. And it is his job to make sure the boys is the back room -- theonlinebusinesssystem.com, bad-credit-repair.info, secretservers.biz, 1click4store.com -- can all conduct their sordid business free from prying eyes.

Ah, but this is merely one, small, ugly punch-up on the corner of a wide battlefield, so for our final act, let us draw a curtain on our little fish and leave them to whatever the digital equivalents of staging bum fights and selling Indiana cigarettes out of their trunks may be, and turn our attention to those that make this plague possible.

The spam-enablers.

Like gun-dealers, Big Tobacco, porn, Big Pharma or American auto-makers pre-“Unsafe at Any Speed”, at the middle of such messy marketplaces you will almost always find a large, profitable and licit enterprise that swears up and down and right to Congress (unless fucknut co-conspirators like Ted Stevens [Republican Senator from Big Oil] are in the room to stop anyone from putting any friendlies under oath who might have a leeettle problem with the truth.) that they know nothing.

Nothing!

So what do we know about eNom, Inc.? The bi-syllabic company that has been the final sheltering bayou for every spammer I’ve found so far?

Well, this is certainly not a picture of their CEO

Mr. Paul Stahura.

Although this is his business address:

2002 156th Ave. NE,
Suite #300
Unigard Park, McKinley Building
Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
Phone: 425.274.4500
Support Fax: 425.974.4791
Operations Fax: 425.974.4796

They are, according to Answers.com:

“eNom was started in 1997 in the garage of its founder and CEO, Paul Stahura. As the Internet has grown and developed over the years, so has eNom. Today, eNom is a profitable, stable, and experienced technology provider in the domain name services industry. With a global customer base, eNom is focused on providing the most stable, flexible, and advanced domain name technology platform in the industry.”

However, there is controversy. Like gun-dealers, they sell a legal product that can easily be used to fuck people up.

Like some gun-dealers, for liability reasons, they have a sign over the door that sez, “No sellin’ to bad people, and don’t go shootin’ people for no damned good reason.”

“"eNom has a zero tolerance spam policy."

And like some gun dealers, the warning obviously comes with a wink and a nod:

“However, according to polarbeach.com, [1] eNom scores in the top five as a registrar of spamvertised sites.

eNom as an exemplar at Spamhaus: The "example" at Spamhaus is of using special name servers to handle catch-all mail addresses of suspended domains. You can see it here: http://www.spamhaus.org/faq/answers.lasso?section=Generic%20Questions This example isn't necessarily indicative of anything either good or bad. It just shows how various registrars accomplish a technical task.

It is far more interesting to go to the Spamhaus Registry of Known Spam Organizations (ROKSO) page, which you will find here: http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso and then do a search for "enom".

There you will find many spammers' sites registered through eNom or using eNom's name services. (True, some of the hits are bogus, e.g. searching for enom and hitting on phenomenon, but most are not.)”

Spam is not an annoyance or an inconvenience: it’s a business.

It’s a vast, profitable, vertical, gray-market cash cow that comes and goes and mutates and slithers around the world at the speed of light like a dumpster full of greased eels, beginning and ending not in some dork’s basement or Chinese e-warfare bunker, but nowhere in particular.

And this wasn’t an attempt at linear story-telling where the bad-guy gets it in the end.

Instead, this is a sketch-for-pleasure of what the world of spam (and identity theft, and phishing, and so forth) seem to be: A sprawling, messy, Russian novel littered with dodgy, overlapping characters and storylines, each pulling the knot tighter for his or her own motives.

Scuttlefish running web-spiders like “Arameda” from the back room of a ball-bearing warehouse on the banks of the Tom River

in West/Central Siberia.

Front companies in South Carolina.

Server farms in Texas.

Whelping-boxes full of DSL lines and weasels in California.

Herbalife scams.

Large, successful corporations in places like Bellvue, Washington that lap the cream off the top and look the other way.

And hero geeks and sentinels pushing back, knives out.

Anyway, none of this stuff was pulled down from the buffers of NSA stealth-sats or EMP-hardened servers at Langley or proprietary packet sniffers that I may or may not be able to borrow from some less-than-savory persons of my acquaintance.

All of it came right off of the Web, via the same search engines anyone can use.

Except in North Korea.

Where the balance between free speech and shotgun advertising is never an issue, because the propaganda comes at straight at you from your own government 24/7/365, and there’s no “off” switch or spamcatcher to stem the tide.