Scott Richter

Last updated
Scott Richter
Scott Richter.jpg
Richter in 2019
Personal information
Born
Scott Richter

(1971-07-18) 18 July 1971 (age 53)
Virginia, U.S.
Website thebigjackpot.com
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2015–present
GenreCasino Slots
Subscribers421 thousand [1]
Total views194 million [1]

Last updated: May 3, 2023

Scott Richter (born 18 July 1971) is the CEO of Media Breakaway, [2] formerly known as OptInRealBig.com LLC. [2] Other related companies are Dynamic Dolphin [3] and affiliate.com. [4] His companies were major senders of Email spam and he was at one time referred to as the 'Spam King', as at one point his company was sending some 100 million emails a day. He and his companies have been sued several times for mass sending unsolicited advertisements.

Contents

Career

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued Richter in December 2003. [5] Facing a $500 million judgment in Washington state from the Microsoft case in March 2005, OptInRealBig.com filed for bankruptcy protection. The company claimed to have assets of less than US$10 million and debts of more than $50 million.

Microsoft's refusal to settle a $20 million claim based on Washington state spam law is what forced OptInRealBig to file for bankruptcy. Steven Richter, who is Scott Richter's father and President and General Counsel of Scott's company, commented "OptIn is profitable but for these lawsuits." [6] Richter paid $7 million to Microsoft in 2006 in a settlement arising out of the lawsuit alleging illegal spam activities. [7]

Richter was listed in the ROKSO top 100 spammers, but is no longer included there. [8] His company once sent some 100 million emails a day. One of the most famous emails was the offer of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards in 2003; Richter claims to have sold 40,000 decks before they were even printed. He was interviewed on The Daily Show by Rob Corddry on 30 March 2004. [9]

In January 2007, his company Media Breakaway was sued by popular social networking website MySpace for allegedly gaining access to members' accounts and using them to send millions of spam messages appearing to be from users' MySpace "friends". [10] Steven Richter, President and General Counsel of the company, denied the allegations. An arbitrator on June 16, 2008 awarded MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in attorney's fees against "spam king" Scott Richter and his Web marketing company, Media Breakaway LLC, of Westminster, Colo., "for barraging MySpace members with unsolicited advertisements." The award was 5% of the amount demanded by MySpace. MySpace alleged that due to Scott, "some of the messages were sent from accounts whose sign-on information had been hijacked by phishing."

In 2008, CBS News reported that Media Breakaway was charging people cell-phone charges for supposedly free ringtones. [11] Media Breakaway is the owner of Dynamic Dolphin, Inc, an ICANN accredited registrar who, according to KnujOn, is one of the few Internet registrars that serve the majority of spamvertised web sites. [12] [13]

On November 22, 2013, ICANN terminated the Registrar Agreement with Dynamic Dolphin. This ends Dynamic Dolphin's business as a domain registrar. The reason given was "material misrepresentation, material inaccuracy, or materially misleading statement(s)" regarding "the registrar's failure to disclose that Scott Richter was the CEO, director, and Secretary of the registrar since 2012" and "the registrar’s failure to disclose Scott Richter’s felony conviction". ICANN has ordered that all domains registered with Dynamic Dolphin be transferred to another registrar within 28 days. [3]

Richter launched a YouTube channel called The Big Jackpot in December 2016. [14]

In March 2017, Scott became a guest writer for Entrepreneur.com. [15] On August 31, 2017, entrepreneur.com published an article by Scott Richter entitled, "Tips to Make Money on YouTube." [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spamming</span> Unsolicited electronic messages, especially advertisements

Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, non-commercial proselytizing, or any prohibited purpose, or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CAN-SPAM Act of 2003</span> American law to regulate bulk e-mail

The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 is a law passed in 2003 establishing the United States' first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail. The law requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce its provisions. Introduced by Republican Conrad Burns, the act passed both the House and Senate during the 108th United States Congress and was signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2003 and was enacted on January 1, 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Email spam</span> Unsolicited electronic advertising by email

Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming). The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoidable, and repetitive. Email spam has steadily grown since the early 1990s, and by 2014 was estimated to account for around 90% of total email traffic.

A domain name scam is a type of intellectual property scam or confidence scam in which unscrupulous domain name registrars attempt to generate revenue by tricking businesses into buying, selling, listing or converting a domain name. The Office of Fair Trading in the United Kingdom has outlined two types of domain name scams which are "Domain name registration scams" and "Domain name renewal scams".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Network Solutions</span> American-based technology company

Network Solutions, LLC, formerly Web.com is an American-based technology company and a subsidiary of Web.com, the 4th largest .com domain name registrar with over 6.7 million registrations as of August 2018. In addition to being a domain name registrar, Network Solutions provides web services such as web hosting, website design and online marketing, including search engine optimization and pay per click management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.tk</span> Country code top-level domain for Tokelau

.tk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand in the South Pacific.

Sanford 'Spamford' Wallace is an Internet spammer. He initially sent junk faxes before coming to notoriety in 1997, promoting himself as the original "Spam King". Wallace's prolific spamming has resulted in encounters with the United States government, anti-spam activists, and large corporations such as Facebook and MySpace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.nu</span> Internet country code top-level domain for the island state of Niue

.nu is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to the island state of Niue. It was one of the first ccTLDs to be marketed to the Internet at large as an alternative to the gTLDs .com, .net, and .org.

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives: build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Spamhaus Project</span> Organization targetting email spammers

The Spamhaus Project is an international organisation based in the Principality of Andorra, founded in 1998 by Steve Linford to take action against what they allege to be spammers. The correctness of this assessment by Spamhaus is regularly disputed. If the assessment is based on objective characteristics or on standards set by Spamhaus itself is disputed. The name spamhaus, a pseudo-German expression, was coined by Linford to refer to an internet service provider, or other firm, which spams or knowingly provides service to spammers. Spamhaus has been criticized to purposely hide all direct methods of contact from its webpages to avoid transparency, while asking transparency from others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outblaze</span>

Outblaze is a technology company that develops and provides digital media products and services including smartphone games and other apps, social media applications, computer and video games, online transaction systems, and web communication software. Although it started out as an application service provider of hosted Web applications, the company gradually transitioned to the video game industry. In 2009 Outblaze sold its messaging business unit in order to focus primarily on digital entertainment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sendio</span> American e-mail security company

Sendio is a Newport Beach, California-based e-mail security company. The privately held company was founded in 2003 by Tal Golan, who currently serves as the company's president and CTO. By using Sender Address Verification technology, Sendio provides an e-mail security solution which stops spam, viruses, malware, phishing attacks and unsolicited e-mail from reaching the e-mail inbox. In February 2007, Sendio received $4 million in venture capital funding from Vicente Capital, Shepherd Ventures and Athenian Venture Partners. Former Microsoft CIO Rick Devenuti was appointed to the Board of Directors at Sendio in 2007.

Name.com is an ICANN accredited domain name registrar and web hosting company based in Denver, Colorado. Since the company was founded in 2003, it has since grown to become one of the leading domain registrars in the world, offering close to 600 Top Level Domains. On its website, Name.com offers a wide range of products and services to help individuals and businesses build and maintain a successful online presence. The company sells DNS domains, web hosting, email services, SSL certificates, and other website products.

<i>Register.com v. Verio</i> American legal case

Register.com v. Verio, 356 F.3d 393, was a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that addressed several issues relevant to Internet law, such as browse wrap licensing, trespass to servers, and enforcement of the policies of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The decision upheld the ruling of a lower court which prevented a provider of web development services from automatically harvesting publicly available registration data from a domain name registrar's servers for advertising purposes.

The Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, is Canada's anti-spam legislation that received Royal Assent on December 15, 2010. The Act replaced Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act (ECPA), which was passed by the House of Commons, but died due to the prorogation of the second session of the 40th Canadian Parliament on December 30, 2009. The Act went into effect July 1, 2014.

Graymail is solicited bulk email messages that don't fit the definition of email spam. Recipient interest in this type of mailing tends to diminish over time, increasing the likelihood that recipients will report graymail as spam. In some cases, graymail can account for up to 82 percent of the average user's email inbox. Graymail was described in 2007 and 2008 by researchers at Microsoft Research looking to improve spam filtering as “messages that could reasonably be considered either spam or good ” hence the name “graymail” was chosen to signify the subjective nature of the classification. A 2008 paper presented at the Fifth annual Conference on Email and Anti-Spam (CEAS) describes graymail as "messages that some users value and others prefer to block". In 2011 a report by The Radicati Group referred to graymail as "newsletters or notifications that a user may have signed up for at one time but no longer wants to receive".

<i>Gordon v. Virtumundo, Inc.</i>

Gordon v. Virtumundo, Inc., 575 F.3d 1040, is a 2009 court opinion in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit addressed the standing requirements necessary for private plaintiffs to bring suit under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, or CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, 15 U.S.C. ch. 103, as well as the scope of the CAN-SPAM Act's federal preemption. Prior to this case, the CAN-SPAM Act's standing requirements had not been addressed at the Court of Appeals level, and only the Fourth Circuit had addressed the CAN-SPAM Act's preemptive scope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosalind Resnick</span>

Rosalind Resnick is an American filmmaker, real estate investor, journalist, author and entrepreneur credited with the creation of opt-in email, a permission-based form of email marketing. She has served on the advisory board of several companies and nonprofits, including the Girl Scouts of Greater New York, the American Red Cross of New York and Do Something, a not-for-profit whose mission is to motivate children to become active in their communities.

<i>Omega World Travel, Inc. v. Mummagraphics, Inc.</i>

Omega World Travel, Inc. v. Mummagraphics, Inc., 469 F.3d 348, is a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in which Mummagraphics, Inc. is sued by Omega World Travel, Inc. (Omega) and Cruise.com after Mummagraphic alleged that they received 11 commercial e-mail messages in violation of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 as well as Oklahoma state law. In the initial filing, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia had awarded summary judgment to Omega on all of Mummagraphics' claims finding that the commercial emails from Omega did not violate the CAN-SPAM Act, and that the CAN-SPAM Act preempted Oklahoma state law. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

References

  1. 1 2 "About The Big Jackpot". YouTube.
  2. 1 2 "Document 20061288133" (pdf). Colorado Secretary of State, Search Business Database.
  3. 1 2 Serad, Maguy (November 22, 2013). "NOTICE OF TERMINATION OF REGISTRAR ACCREDITATION AGREEMENT" (PDF). Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
  4. Richi Jennings (June 2008). "Scott Richter's six-mil spam suit settlement". computerworld.com.
  5. Hansell, Saul (2003-12-19). "TECHNOLOGY; Spitzer Files Suit Against 3 Over Spam (Published 2003)". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  6. "DenverPost.com – Technology". 2005-03-30. Archived from the original on 2005-03-30. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  7. World Wide Web – MySpace Takes On the 'Spam King'
  8. "The Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO)" . Retrieved 24 November 2012.
  9. YouTube – CPA Empire Scott Richter
  10. "MySpace sues alleged big-time spammer". CNN. Reuters. January 22, 2007.[ permanent dead link ]
  11. "Ringing Up Big Charges For "Free" Tones". CBS News. February 22, 2008.
  12. Brian Krebs (May 19, 2008). "Most Spam Sites Tied to a Handful of Registrars". The Washington Post .
  13. "Rogue Domain Registrars – 1st Quarter 2012: A Deep Review of Illicit Internet Drug Traffic and ICANN Policy" (PDF). 2019-04-02. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-04-02. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  14. Schwartz, David G. "YouTube Slot Controversy Shows The Perils Of Your Side Hustle". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  15. Richter, Scott (2017-03-09). "The Future Of Native Advertising for Brands and Publishers". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2021-02-23.
  16. Richter, Scott (2017-08-31). "12 Tips to Make Money On YouTube". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2021-02-23.