Information about Green Card Spam

Laurence A. Canter (born June 24, 1953) and Martha S. Siegel (April 9, 1948–2000) were a husband-and-wife firm of lawyers who on April 12, 1994 posted the first massive commercial Usenet spam. To many people, this event, coming not long after the National Science Foundation lifted its unofficial ban on commercial speech on the Internet, marks the end of the Net's early period, when the original Netiquette could still be enforced.

Canter and Siegel were not the first Usenet spammers. The "Green Card" spam was, however, the first commercial Usenet spam, and its unrepentant authors are seen as having fired the starting gun for the legions of spammers that now occupy the Internet.

Early Usenet spam

The first documented spam on Usenet was sent by Rob Noha (jj@cup.portal.com) on May 24, 1988 [1] asking for money for his college fund [2]. This provoked months of discussion.

The first Usenet spam called "spam" was sent by an Andrews University sysadmin named Clarence L. Thomas IV (no relation to the United States Supreme Court Justice) who sent out a message headed "Global Alert For All: Jesus is Coming Soon" on January 17, 1994.

Who were Canter & Siegel?

Canter & Siegel were both immigration lawyers. Canter went to college at the University of Arizona and received his law degree from St Mary's University in Texas (he later received an LLM in taxation from Georgetown University Law Center), while Siegel went to college at Carnegie Mellon University and also went to St Mary's University for law school. Canter was admitted to the Tennessee state bar in 1978, and Siegel was admitted to the same bar in 1980.

The two lawyers specialised in immigration work from about 1980 onwards and were originally based in Sarasota, Florida. Canter served as the chairperson of the Central Florida chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in the early 1980s and as such was an ex officio member of the AILA's national board of governors.

However, he lost this status when he and his wife ran into trouble with the bar in 1987. They were suspended from the Bar for 90 days after the Florida Supreme Court determined (on September 10, 1987) that they were "guilty of a deliberate scheme to misrepresent facts in order to secure full financing of their purchase [of a property they were purchasing for use as their law office]" (Supreme Court of Florida, 511 So.2d 995). Canter eventually resigned from the Florida Bar in October 1988 after being charged with various ethical violations. In a press release of October 13, the Florida Bar stated:

Canter, of 240 North Washington Boulevard, Sarasota, was charged with numerous violations of the attorney disciplinary rules including neglect, misrepresentation, misappropriation of client funds and perjury.

Several of the complaints against Canter involved his failure to file the necessary or appropriate documents with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Services in matters of permanent residency and work visas. In addition, Canter refused to refund clients' funds and neglected to notify his clients that he has been suspended from the practice of law as a result of a previous discipline.

The Florida Bar further alleges that Canter committed perjury by filing a false affidavit with the Bar and while testifying under oath in a deposition. These charges resulted after an audit of Canter's trust account by the Bar showed that trust funds were held in Canter's account during the time period when he denied any funds were present.

The disciplinary action made him ineligible for membership in the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and his membership was thereby terminated. At approximately the same time, in protest to what was described as a "Witch Hunt" Siegel also resigned her membership in the Florida Bar (although she was not party to the charges against her husband). They subsequently moved to Scottsdale, Arizona and set up offices in Tucson, Arizona.

They published at least three books on the subject of immigration - a 1989 book entitled U.S. Immigration Made Easy (ISSN 1055-9647) and a 1992 book entitled Insider's guide to successful U.S. immigration : discover how to make the New Immigration Act work for you (ISBN 0-06-273166-1). Some time in the early 1990s they apparently also published a book called "Winning At U.S. Immigration In The '90s".

The Green Card Spam

In March 1994, they used a Perl script written by a Phoenix programmer known only as 'Jason', to generate advertisements for their service of enrolling people in a "Green card lottery". This US government program gives "green cards" to certain non-citizens, allowing them to stay and work in the country. The two lawyers offered to do the necessary paperwork for a fee.

Canter & Siegel sent their advertisement, entitled "Green Card Lottery - Final One?", to at least 6,000 Usenet discussion groups, a huge number at the time. This led to a great outcry, and the first large-scale use of software "cancelbots" to trawl Usenet and kill their messages was implemented by Arnt Gulbrandsen within minutes of the first post. Their internet service provider, Internet Direct, received so many complaints that its mail servers crashed repeatedly for the next two days; not surprisingly, it promptly terminated their service. The Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee became interested and asked Canter and Siegel to explain themselves. Despite the ire directed at the two lawyers, they claimed in a December 1994 interview to have gained 1,000 new clients and "made $100,000 off an ad that cost them only pennies".

On May 5, 1994 the couple established a company called Cybersell, with the web domain of www.sell.com (now belonging to sell.com classifieds). They promoted themselves as experts in the then-new business of online retail and in February 1995 undertook the first known commercial spamming on behalf of clients (so-called "spam for hire"). They wrote a book entitled How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway : Everyone's Guerrilla Guide to Marketing on the Internet and Other On-line Services (ISBN 0-06-272065-1). In 1997, Martha Siegel published a revised version entitled How to Make a Fortune on the Internet (ISBN 0-06-273466-0) under her name only.

Cybersell was dissolved by default in March 1998 after repeatedly failing to file annual reports or pay its incorporation fees.

What happened to Canter & Siegel?

The couple divorced in 1996. Canter was permanently disbarred from practicing law by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 1997, partly because of his e-mail advertising campaign, though he had not actually practiced law since 1995. William W. Hunt III of the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility told Wired magazine that "We disbarred him and gave him a one-year sentence just to emphasize that his email campaign was a particularly egregious offense." Canter was also disciplined for failing to adequately communicate with two clients, and charging one an improper nonrefundable retainer and refusing to return his file.

Siegel took over the business, but as of 2000, Canter was reporting that she had died. As of 2006, Canter has a new company called Host Milo Corporation, which hosts specialized websites. According to a 2002 interview, he still has no regrets about the "Green Card Spam": "Given the same set of circumstance — the same time, the stage of the Internet — I'd probably do the same thing. Somebody would have done it, if we hadn't done it."

References

• 1994 Usenet post giving background on Canter & Siegel
• "Phoenix Lawyers Irk Internet Users Again", Wall Street Journal, June 22, 1994
• "Battle for the Internet", Time magazine, July 25, 1994
• Interview with Canter & Siegel, New York Times, October 16, 1994
• "Spamming Lawyer Disbarred", Wired magazine, July 10, 1997
• "The Spam That Started It All", Wired magazine, April 13, 1999
• "The father of modern spam speaks", CNET News, March 26, 2002
• "The Spam Heard Around The World", Hartford Courant, June 30, 2002
• "Spambusters", The Boston Globe, October 10, 2003