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Don't Spam the Judge


Kevin Trudeau, infomercial peddler of miracle cures (and who knows what else), narrowly avoided jail on Thursday after being cited for contempt over his recent attempt to incite friends and followers to harass the judge presiding over his trial.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman found Trudeau in contempt after he "posted the judge’s e-mail address online and asked listeners of his radio show and those who visit his Web site to e-mail Gettleman. Gettleman said Trudeau falsely told listeners the judge wanted to burn all of his books and fine him tens of millions of dollars.

"Since 2003, Gettleman has presided over a civil case filed by the Federal Trade Commission involving deceptive ads for a Trudeau weight-loss book. Gettleman said Trudeau repeatedly deceived the public and flouted the court’s rules, leading to three contempt findings by the judge."

I'm assuming that all of these alleged harassers think the internet is anonymous. They're going to be in for a rude surprise once they find out it's not. Tracking down who sent these email messages isn't that hard to do, especially when you're about to wield the power of a subpoena. I'll be curious to see if the judge feels these messages (and their senders) warrant further investigation.

2 Comments

Comments policy: Al is always right. Kidding, mostly. Be polite, please and thank you.

  1. Kevin Trudeau deserved the contempt charge, no argument there.

    I'm a bit unclear as to the other folks emailing though, what crime would the alleged harassers be violating? Merely emailing an opinion to a judge might not be a good way to convince a judge of anything, but neither is it illegal on it's own.

    Also, using "Spam" in the title seems like an odd choice, just as many spammers like to brand spam as "that which we don't send", spam isn't "email I don't like", it's "unsolicited bulk email" -- A number of unwanted individually typed and sent emails might be unsolicited, but wouldn't appear to fall under "bulk"

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  2. Emailing the judge likely isn't a crime. Threatening the judge might be a crime. My understanding is that the comments were far from kind; and my hypothesis is that this group of people is filled with more than a few morons who would be dumb enough to email death threats and what not.

    As for spam, lots of people use the word "spam" in this common context of "mail I don't want." And it is actually kind of bulk, here....his mailbox got a lot of messages. From different senders doesn't change the fact that it was bulk. Consider the individual spam recipient of a commercial email; he doesn't know if he was the only recipient or if he was one of a million. Is it still spam? I say yes.

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