Spam Kings, hardcover edition

Chapter 10. 

The Pinacle Partnership Program

Margie spoke hardly any English, and Hawke had only a rudimentary command of Spanish. But he wasn’t paying her $2,000 a week for her conversation skills. In the first month after Margie arrived in Pawtucket, Hawke made sure he got his money’s worth of sex. Even when he was working at his computer, she was on duty. Theirs was a purely professional arrangement; neither was under any illusion that they would fall in love or that Margie would become Hawke’s Colombian bride.

At the time, summer 2003, Hawke was doing relatively little spamming. Instead, he spent most of his time recruiting and directing other spammers to sell Pinacle on commission for Amazing Internet. Using a new alias, “Dave Bridger,” he posted want ads at BulkersClub.com and other spamming forums. He also mailed the recruiting ad to a list of several thousand addresses he had harvested from spam sites. The ads invited “real bulkers” to join him in peddling penis-enlargement pills.^[1]

“You’ll market a product called Pinacle, an herbal penis enlarger that sells like water in the desert. Everyone wants this stuff; guys buy it for themselves, girls buy it for their guys,” said one ad. Hawke claimed some members of his affiliate program were earning $20,000 in commissions each week. “This product pulls a massive amount of sales...All you do is MAIL, MAIL, MAIL. And collect your commission check,” promised a later version of the ad.

Hawke’s recruiting ads included the address of a ...