Washington man files spam lawsuit against Uniontown business
A man from the state of Washington has filed suit against a Uniontown business, asking for more than $600,000 for thousands of alleged violations of anti-spam laws. James S. Gordon Jr. filed the suit in Benton County at the Benton-Franklin Justice Center in Kennewick, Wash., on Dec. 15 alleging that Commonwealth Marketing Group Inc. sent him 1,266 unsolicited and misleading e-mails.
Those e-mails, according to the civil complaint, tried to get Gordon to apply for gold or platinum credit cards. However, according to the suit, the offers were not for the credit cards that the e-mail subject lines proclaimed.
“Rather than being a major credit card, (Commonwealth Marketing’s) offer is for its limited buying club. Defendant’s electronic mail messages are advertisements featuring its buying club and the cards that are required to buy its products,” according to the suit.
Under a Washington law passed in 1998 and upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2001, businesses are not allowed to send spam – or unsolicited, commercial e-mail messages – that have been addressed in a false or misleading way. The law gives Washington courts jurisdiction over out-of-state defendants doing business within the state, according to the Washington attorney general’s Web site.
Gordon’s suit indicates that the messages he reportedly received from Commonwealth Marketing contained a total of 131 different subject lines, offering from $600 to $7,500 in credit through platinum or gold cards.
However, Gordon indicated that the subject lines misrepresented what Commonwealth Marketing actually was offering.
“The electronic mail messages were designed to entice plaintiff to believe that he would be applying for a major platinum credit card. Instead, defendant is offering its own products and credit rather than a universally accepted credit card such as VISA and MasterCard,” said the suit.
The suit also claims that commercial e-mails should have valid addresses to which to reply and request the e-mails cease. Commonwealth Marketing’s e-mails, said the suit, came from as many as 551 different senders.
With that many addresses to reply to, Gordon claimed he had no way to know to which he should respond to stop the e-mails. It also created another potential problem, said the suit.
“By responding to an e-mail wherein the principal (sender) is not reached, plaintiff would be verifying its valid e-mail address to a marketing agent who can then send additional unsolicited e-mail to plaintiff from many other principals,” according to the suit.
Instead, Gordon’s suit indicates that he went directly to Commonwealth Marketing, sending a letter requesting payment for the e-mails, as allowed under Washington law.
In response, the suit indicates that Gordon got even more e-mail from Commonwealth Marketing.
“Prior to plaintiff’s letter to defendant, plaintiff received an average of two e-mails per day from defendant. After defendant’s receipt of plaintiff’s letter, plaintiff received an average of 12 e-mails per day from defendant,” according to the suit.
Gordon indicated he received 1,196 e-mails from Commonwealth Marketing between Sept. 6 and Dec. 11, 2003.
The number of e-mails, according to the suit, amounts to unlawful harassment of Gordon. He noted in the suit that his e-mail address is registered with Washington’s Association of Internet Providers database (WAISP).
That database is one of several ways that e-mail address holders can protect themselves from unwanted e-mail under Washington’s Unsolicited Commercial E-mail law.
The suit asks for $500 for each e-mail sent, resulting in a total file request of $633,000 from Commonwealth Marketing. Gordon’s suit also asks the court to award him reasonable attorney fees.
This is not the first bout of legal trouble for Commonwealth Marketing. In May 2003, Commonwealth President Fredrick F. Zeigler III was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison, plus three years of supervised release, for one count each of filing false income tax returns and bank fraud related to his business.
Zeigler is listed as the president of Commonwealth Marking Group, Inc. on the Department of State’s Web site.
The 46-year-old Chalk Hill man pleaded guilty to the offenses in February 2003.
For the tax years of 1995 and 1996, federal prosecutors said, Zeigler claimed a number of personal purchases, including a boat and taxidermy work done on a bear he killed in Alaska, were business expenditures.
The bank fraud charge centered around a vacation package and credit card plan offered by Commonwealth Marketing between July 1996 and March 1997. In that case, Zeigler made an agreement with a Portland, Ore., bank to offer the joint package to consumers.
The plan reportedly was marketed to people who would not be able to afford the vacation and allowed them to charge the trip on the credit card. To qualify for the credit card, however, the recipient needed a minimum monthly income of $833.
Zeigler, according to prosecutors, authorized those who operated the telemarketing rooms to falsely inflate the income for those who did not qualify for the card.
While the Portland bank suffered no financial loss, Commonwealth received in excess of $700,000 in fees in connection with the program.
According to the federal prison Web site, Zeigler is being housed in a Cumberland, Md., facility and has a projected release date of July 18, 2004.