AOL Digging Up Yards Looking for Gold

This is a strange case. So AOL sued a notorious spammer Davis Hawke for spamming its userbase, and they were awarded 12.8 million dollars by a Federal Judge. The problem is that Hawke dipped out and never paid AOL the money he owed. And supposedly, he was pretty good at sending spam, because he bought gold and platinum bars with his ill gotten gains, and he buried them somewhere like some type of pirate booty.

AOL thinks they know where Hawke buried his treasure, and they are going after it with a court order and a bulldozer.

From the WaPo here:

AOL Looking for Gold in Spam Case
To Collect $12.8 Million, Firm Wants to Dig Up a Yard

AOL is preparing to dig for buried gold and platinum bars on property in Massachusetts owned by the parents of Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a man it sued for sending millions of unwanted spam e-mails to its customers.

AOL won a $12.8 million judgment last year in U.S. District Court in Virginia against Hawke but has been unable to contact Hawke to collect any of the money he was ordered to pay.

“I don’t care if they dig up the entire yard. They’re just going to make fools of themselves,” said Peggy Greenbaum, Hawke’s mother.

She said AOL’s lawyer notified the family that the company intends to use bulldozers and geological teams to hunt for gold and platinum on their property.

Greenbaum said she has not talked with her son in more than a year and complained about the embarrassment and humiliation he brought to the family.

“This exercise isn’t something out of . . . ‘Treasure Island,’ ” AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said. “This is a court-directed, judge-approved legal process that is simply aimed at responsibly recovering hidden assets.”

To win a judge’s permission for the search, AOL submitted receipts reflecting large purchases by Hawke of gold and platinum bars, Graham said. The company indicated that it thinks Hawke buried the gold and platinum on his parents’ property.

With the price of gold going up, I suppose this is a pretty good idea. But this whole story puts a new twist on the phrase “software piracy.” Arrgg!