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Fugitive Neo-Nazi Spam King Davis Hawke

ProfessorF

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 9, 2005
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Neo-Nazi's vs AOL.
Hidden treasure.
Brilliant.

AOL seeks spammer's buried gold
Pirate treasure hunt
By John Leyden
Published Thursday 17th August 2006 14:14 GMT

AOL is seeking to excavate grounds owned by parents of a convicted spammer in the hopes of finding gold bars and other buried booty thought to be worth up to $500,000.
The ISP is seeking to uncover the cache of treasure to recover part of the $12.8m judgment awarded to it in a lawsuit against penis-pill purveyor Davis Hawke.

Hawke was held responsible for sending at least 130,000 spam emails to AOL subscribers over three months during 2004 in a May 2005 judgement, made in his absence.
AOL's investigations have led it to conclude that $500,000 in gold and platinum bars might be hidden in or around Hawke's parents' home in Medfield, Massachusetts.
The net services giant wants to send in the bulldozers to hunt for the booty in the two acres of land owned by Hawke's parents and near his grandparents' home in nearby Westwood. The tip-off of the potential location of the loot came from Hawke's ex-girlfriend, Patricia Lingenfelter, who describes her former squeeze as "fundamentally lazy".
The enforcement of previous orders obtained by AOL against spammers have involved seizures of Porsche sports cars, gold coins, and other property worth millions, funds the internet firm has ploughed back into its efforts at eradicating irksome junk mail. However, this is the first time the ISP has sought to find a spam pirate's buried treasure.
AOL obtained receipts of gold purchases made by Hawke in order to persuade a judge to make the excavation order.
AP reports that Hawke's parents plan to challenge the order, which would involve temporarily removing them and Hawke's grandparents from their respective properties. AOL plans to use sonar and radar equipment to assist its search in order to minimise damage.
Hawke's mother, Peggy Greenbaum, denies that her son's assets are hidden about her property. Meanwhile, the man himself has gone to ground, according to AOL.
"I don't care if they dig up the entire yard. They're just going to make fools of themselves," Hawke's mother Peggy Greenbaum said. "There's absolutely no reason for them to think that Davis Hawke would be stupid enough to bury gold on our property. My son is long gone."
Hawke, a reported neo-nazi activist in his youth who renounced his birth name, Andrew Britt Greenbaum, and his affiliates are reckoned to have raked in more than $600,000 each month through spamvertising loans, porn, jewellery, and prescription drugs. The family say they haven't seen him for a year. ®

source 1
And those with a Grauniad membership can look here too.
 
Wouldn't it be ironic if all they found was a buried stash of unwanted AOL CDs :lol:
 
I'm always glad to hear of people getting heavy with spammers and porn merchants. (Even though I now get very little spam myself.) They're the scum of the internet.

(Mind you, from what I've seen of AOL, they're not much better in some ways, always trying to control the surfing of their clients.)
 
ProfessorF said:
Neo-Nazi's vs AOL.

The tip-off of the potential location of the loot came from Hawke's ex-girlfriend, Patricia Lingenfelter, who describes her former squeeze as "fundamentally lazy".


Why didn't they find out about the site via a cunning email?

"Dear Sir,
I am the current head of the Nigerian gold reserve. If you give me details of any fields I could bury it in, you will get a ten per cent deposit...."
 
Update / Closure ...

According to this Boston Herald excerpt, AOL gave up on the excavation project in 2007.
AOL gives up treasure hunt
Tuesday, July 24, 2007

America Online has given up its demand to dig up the lawns of two Massachusetts homes where it thought a neo-Nazi spam scammer may have buried gold.

The Internet company said yesterday it no longer wants to take a backhoe to properties in Medfield and Westwood because of a ‘‘lapse of time ’’ and other unspecified reasons surrounding the case of Davis Wolfgang Hawke, the missing online scammer who once bragged he buried gold and platinum bars on the properties owned by relatives.

SOURCE: https://archive.is/20070823000734/h...leid=1013094&srvc=biz#selection-637.0-751.334
 
Update ... I'd like to think this update achieves closure, but I suspect a whole new chapter in this colorful con man's saga will emerge in the form of conspiracy and he's-not-really-dead claims ...

Hawke had been a fugitive for a couple of decades, and authorities had basically given up trying to find him. It turns out they were right to quit wasting their time. Hawke was shot to death and burned to a crisp in British Columbia back in 2017. It's only now that authorities have identified the remains.
Homicide victim found in burnt-out SUV ID'd as man behind spam-email empire who dodged $12.8M lawsuit

More than three years after his death, a man who was shot dead and found in a burnt-out SUV near Squamish, B.C., has been identified as a U.S. citizen known for spreading racist, neo-Nazi ideologies and for a massive spam email campaign that led to a $12.8-million US lawsuit.

Police found Davis Wolfgang Hawke dead on the Cheekye Forest Road, off the Sea to Sky Highway east of Paradise Valley, around 9:30 a.m. on June 14, 2017. Officers had been called about a burnt, red 2000 GMC Yukon XL on the side of the road.

An autopsy later confirmed the man had been shot dead, but for years the RCMP could not confirm his real name.

The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) only knew he went by the alias Jesse James, and that he was well known as an avid climber in Squamish, which is around 50 kilometres north of Vancouver.

But with IHIT's confirmation of his identity on Thursday, details about Hawke's past — including his fascist sympathies and a lucrative spam empire he built hawking loans, pornography, jewelry and prescription drugs — have come to light thanks to the work of an investigative journalist. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/davis-wolfgang-hawke-missing-dead-1.5782107
 
Update ... I'd like to think this update achieves closure, but I suspect a whole new chapter in this colorful con man's saga will emerge in the form of conspiracy and he's-not-really-dead claims ...

Hawke had been a fugitive for a couple of decades, and authorities had basically given up trying to find him. It turns out they were right to quit wasting their time. Hawke was shot to death and burned to a crisp in British Columbia back in 2017. It's only now that authorities have identified the remains.


FULL STORY: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/davis-wolfgang-hawke-missing-dead-1.5782107
He may have spammed and conned the wrong person.
 
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