Court action is being taken over what NZ and US officials are calling one of the biggest spam email operations in the world.
Three Christchurch men have been named in a civil case filed in New Zealand by Internal Affairs.
Internal Affairs says the spam was promoting sex and pharmaceutical products, even replica watches. And the department says the three men involved have made a lot of money doing it.
Spokesman Keith Manch says they have identified just over two million spam emails that came to New Zealand addresses alone in a three month period last year.
"I think we've seen around $US2 million that's been going through accounts related to them," he says.
The operation is the first to be targeted under tough new anti-spam laws in New Zealand which say people should not send emails unless they are welcome.
"Our application to the court is for penalties of up to $200,000 for each of those individuals," Manch says.
Five years ago, before it was illegal, Shane Atkinson was known as the king of Kiwi spam.
"If anyone got offended by that I'm sorry for offending them...I didn't think I was doing anything wrong," Atkinson said at the time.
He said then he was giving up the spam business but today he wasn't so keen to talk. His brother Lance, who now lives in Australia, is the second man named. The third is Christchurch courier Roland Smits.
Smits told ONE News they will be filing a defence at the Christchurch court. He says lawyers have told them not to talk to anybody about the case but says they haven't made anything like the millions of dollars claimed by Internal Affairs.
Investigators say they have been on the case since last year.
"We seized 22 computers, we executed three or four search warrants at the beginning," says Manch.
Federal officials in the US have revealed they are also taking a case against Lance Atkinson.
And some US companies are calling it one of the biggest spam
operations in the world.
