Chronic spammer in NZ 

One of America's most notorious computer spam artists has turned up in New Zealand.

Brendan Battles has been described as a "chronic spammer", and has just lost his job in New Zealand because of a spamming incident he says never happened.

What has become known as spam, are unsolicited emails that choke computers worldwide.

"He's one of the more prolific spammers - 50 million emails a day," Computerworld Editor Paul Brislen says of Battles.

Battles has been listed on anti-spam websites as a "chronic professional spammer" and is well known to Brian McWilliams, the author of the book Spam King.

"He's an old time spammer, he's been around in the spam business just about as long as there's been spam," says McWilliams.

Internet investigators have spent years trying to track down and stop Brendan Battles from spamming, but ONE News found him within a matter of hours after obtaining his CV, which has apparently been circulating as spam

Battles did not want to be filmed at first, but later agreed to a television interview.

"I've made mistakes in the past, I'm not denying that, I've also put that in the past," says Battles.

His past has come back to haunt him; he has just been dismissed from Auckland's Compass Communications after an alleged spamming incident involving 32,000 unauthorised emails.

"We put a lot of energy and resource into stopping it reaching our customers , so there's no place for spam in Compass," says Karin Hussona, Chief Executive of Compass Communications.

Spamming is not illegal in New Zealand, and Battles says he has done nothing wrong.

"In my contract it was very clear that I was to use different techniques other than traditional marketing and canvassing," says Battles.

"The content of the email and the way it was sent out was not approved by Compass," says Hussona.

Despite his troubles, Battles says he wants to put his computer skills to good use.

If anyone's interested in talking about a position, I'm looking for work," he says.