Today the FTC has brought actions against an email spammers for defrauding consumers into believing that they must register for health insurance under the Affordable Health Care Act that day or face fines or worse. The email did not go to any official website for the ACA, nor was associated with any government program but instead went to various websites of insurance companies. They also violated several provisions of CAN-SPAM according to the lawsuit.
According to the press release:
The FTC charges the defendants with violating the FTC Act by falsely representing that consumers would violate federal law if they did not select health insurance by the dates that appeared in their email messages. The complaint alleges that the defendants violated the CAN-SPAM Act by not providing consumers who received the spam email messages with a clear and conspicuous notice that they had the right to opt out of receiving future commercial email messages from the defendants, and by sending commercial email messages that did not include the sender’s physical postal address.
Mr. Shalev is also on Spamhaus’ Register of Known Spam Operations, and is considered one of the worst spammers in the world, according to CRN.com . Operations are reported to be run out of Fort Lauderdale and Mr. Shalev’s Hollywood Boulevard Home.
