Dateline tracks down a porn spammer

Internet porn convention in Vegas
Las Vegas is a place not exactly unfamiliar with the flesh trade.

We arrive at the Venetian hotel, setting for the Internet porn industry’s annual convention. 

They’re all here — the celebrities, the stars of the porn business. It’s like a furniture convention except these ladies aren’t selling office chairs, they’re selling porn over the Internet. And everyone here is desperate to find clever ways to sell more of porn online. Most will tell you it isn’t ethical to spam — but they admit a lot of porn is sold that way. Spamming captures the eyes of millions of consumers.

And to learn how to get your porn out there onto people’s computer screens, there are even seminars. We find one with a familiar name, someone from the company called Python is on the panel. Remember we went looking for Python at the address that turned out to be a restaurant under construction? The company seems to have a big presence here at the porn convention.

We meet an executive from Python, Ally Drummond. Can I get her to admit on camera that her company owns "Spunkfarm"? Remember we’re wearing hidden cameras and no one knows we’re with "Dateline." 

Hockenberry: One of your products that I’m familiar with, "Spunkfarm" — does "Spunkfarm" work? It’s not pretty.

Ally Drummond: When we first launched it, actually. It did.

There, on camera the admission we came here for: Her company Python owns the online porn.

But they’re not the ones who actually send the porn e-mails out. They pay those independent salespeople to drum up subscriptions and they’re the ones who also send out the unwanted spam.

And we were trying to find out exactly which one of them spammed Julie.

Drummond claimed that it’s against company policy to spam Julie or anyone else. And she said if we did have that salesman’s ID code, she could help us find him.

Hockenberry: So based on this number, you can find the spammer and shut them down?

Ally Drummond: We can.

Hockenberry: You can. Would you? Is there someone I could talk to?

Ally Drummond: You’d have to e-mail.

To get the name of our porn spammer, she wants us to e-mail someone back in Canada, she gives us his name: Richard Burry.

That name sounded familiar to us. And we didn’t need to go all the way back to Toronto, it turns out, to find him. 

There in the convention hall, right at the Python display, we found a familiar face. Richard Burry was one of the people we met back in Toronto — the one who said we’d never be able to find the spammer who sent Julie the porn.

Remember when we were back in Toronto we thought he was just someone who helped Web sites get connected to the Internet — not a pornographer or a spammer? But now that we’ve found him at a porn convention in Las Vegas, he explains.

Richard Burry: Um, I’m actually with a different company as well, actually, it’s... they’re all different companies ...

Hockenberry: A lot of companies.

Burry: They’re all different companies, yeah.

One of the companies he’s affilliated with is behind "Spunkfarm." And in Las Vegas with him, taking pictures, is Judson Rosebush. The "custodian of records" is a long way from Carnegie Hall.

But by now, they’ve figured out we’re reporters. Still, we now know Burry is connected to "Spunkfarm." And we ask him to identify the person who spammed the porn to Julie in Texas.  Burry promises he will.

Soon, we’re escorted out of the convention.

A couple of days later, back in New York, we’re still waiting for Richard to send us the name of the salesmen who spammed Julie. 

It shouldn’t be hard — after all, they pay him a commission each time he sells their product. 

But now Burry says he’s not so sure he wants to identify that spammer. Burry says he’s afraid giving the guy up would make him look bad. Kind of surprising, since they admit the spammer broke the rules and shouldn’t have sent the stuff to someone who didn’t want it in the first place.

Finally, Burry says he’ll talk to his business partners and get back to us. A week goes by.  Nothing. Then, the fax machine rings.

We have a name.

We may finally put a face on the person who sent Julie that porn e-mail. We’re going back to Canada, this time to Montreal.

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