According to papers filed by the FTC with the court, Walter Rines, his company, Online Turbo Merchant, Inc., and his business partner, Sanford Wallace, diverted users of MySpace.com to different Web sites and barraged them with ads to earn advertising commissions. The agency alleged that the defendants targeted MySpace users with "phishing," "pagejacking," and "mousetrapping" tactics in violation of a previous federal court order.
In October 2005, the FTC charged Odysseus Marketing, Inc. and its principal, Rines, with luring consumers to their Web site by offering free software including a program that supposedly allowed them to engage in anonymous peer-to-peer file sharing. According to the FTC, the bogus software was bundled with spyware that intercepted and replaced search results and barraged consumers' computers with pop-up ads. The FTC alleged that the defendants' software captured consumers personal information and transmitted the information to the defendants' servers. Consumers were unable to locate or uninstall the spyware through reasonable means, the agency charged. The court ordered a preliminary halt to these practices pending trial, and in October 2006 Odysseus and Rines settled the charges by stipulating to a permanent injunction.
The permanent injunction prohibits the defendants from redirecting consumers' computers to sites other than those selected by the consumers, and it requires them to obtain consumers' express consent before downloading or distributing any content to their computers.
In its most recent filing, the FTC alleges that Rines, his company, and his business partner Wallace knew of the permanent injunction and violated that order by diverting users from MySpace.com to their Web sites and barraging them with ads. Specifically, the agency charges that the defendants distributed online content to consumers without their consent; obtained personal information about MySpace users without their consent by sending phishing messages that appeared to be from MySpace or other MySpace users; redirected users to Web sites other than those they chose to visit by pagejacking them to Web sites displaying advertisements; and modified and disabled users' Web-browser navigation controls by mousetrapping. The agency also alleges that Rines violated the previous order by failing to obtain the required bond before participating or assisting others in the display of online advertising.
The FTC has asked the court to order the defendants to give up the money they earned from their scheme. The contempt motion for violations of a permanent injunction was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire.
