November 26, 2000

1:25 AM

This sitesent spam offering to help fund an effort "to bring electronic touch-screen computer voting to every county in the U.S.A." Problem is, it looks like fraud. Google cache to the rescue. Turns out there's not enough money in gay porn. More below...
posted by Mo Nickels (5 comments total)

Okay, maybe not fraud, but how about slimy? Maybe we should call this "profile of a get-rich-quick believer." This guy is trying the three big tricks--domain speculation, porn, spam--that seem like easy money. Now he's added the PayPal scam in its most familiar form: a page filled with right-sounding rhetoric against something obvious (depending on your politics) with a request for a small donation. The money is given voluntarily, it's an innocuous amount, and so the chances of pursual or follow-up are minimal. But there seems to be no real activist organization receiving the donation, and no promise of real action. It's just a guy (figuratively) cashing checks.

A few more notes, just because I like to keep in practice.

-- Three days ago he cross-posted a message to five election-related newsgroups promoting inwhysee.com, claiming "Financed by my grass-roots citizens action group- Moe Wampum, Inc., www.inwhysee.com is dedicated to the eliminating the 'soft money infiltration' and present punch card system with touch-screen computerized voting."

-- This may be offensive as it contains obscenities and porn: the Google cache of the original inwhysee.com home page. One of the cached Google links of the former content of inwhysee.com shows a naked man tied to a bed. So electronic voting and gay bondage are related how?

-- The PayPal records have this information:
About Moe Wampum, Inc., Account Creation Date, July 08, 2000, [e-mail], 818-209-3749

--Domains owned by same person: bantheammo.com (the .org version, also owned by this guy, is for sale at Great Domains), inwhysee.com, releaserobertdowneyjr.com and bigyenta.com. For more, check out alt.domain-names.forsale courtesy of Deja.com. Also this message and all of his messages archived by Deja.com here. Because there is no handle in the registration records, it's hard to come up with all the domains.

-- Compiled from domain registrations:
Moe Wampum, Inc.
Gary L. Mittin
270 N. Canon Dr., PMB#1267
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Phone: [phone]
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

--Do you think "ggekko" stands for "Gordon Gekko"?

--In April of this year, Gary Mittin sent a message to the soc.culture.jewish newsgroup promoting his new site "BigYenta.com", a place to meet upscale Jewish singles. In September, he sent email to alt.gossip.celebrities and alt.showbiz.gossip trying to sell the domain: "Think that it has the makings of a great gossip news title as 'bigyenta' means 'big gossip/big mouth'.  Present usage is a gay subscription site (generating income)." A listing at Queery.com shows the site.

-- The egroups mailing list was created yesterday.

-- Could be a different guy, but: Associated Press via USA Today: "In Tarzana, Calif., investment manager Gary Mittin tried to watch last week's debate online at work but got fed up with the grainy images on a small screen. He switched to radio within minutes: 'Radio was much more intimate.'"

-- 12 August 2000, Los Angeles Times: "SPEAKING OF THE COMMUTES HERE: Gary Mittin of Tarzana is trying to sell his rights to the Internet domain name hell-ay.com for $ 25,000. And he'll throw in westhell-ay.com for another 5K."

-- 31 July 2000, Washington Times: "Figuring Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush might fool everybody by selecting Richard B. Cheney as his running mate, Inside the Beltway reader Gary Mittin weeks ago registered the Internet domain 'gwbush-cheney.com.' Now the domain is up for auction on Yahoo, with bidding starting at $1." The domain is now showing the same content as inwhysee.com.

-- Reverse lookup on the phone numbers came up dry on available Web sources as did a search for other email addresses. However, a left-behind page at inwhysee.com has the address "[e-mail]" which I believe is a reference to the film Jerry Maguire. Is there a role-model pattern forming here? Metatags for the same page include the sentence "Sports Betting Online sports book wagering. Real money betting on your favoritesports right in your browser!" and numerous other keywords related to online sports betting.



posted by Mo Nickels at 3:09 AM on November 26, 2000

I guess that pretty much sums it up.
posted by Hjorth at 7:37 AM on November 26, 2000

how's the carpel tunnel doing?
posted by tomorama at 2:09 PM on November 26, 2000

Hey Mo Nickels, how do we know that you aren't Moe Wampum?
posted by gluechunk at 2:25 PM on November 26, 2000

You don't. But have a ball: I'm all over the Internet. Dig me up and prove it for yourself.
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:49 AM on November 27, 2000