It began, rather tentatively, with a single spam for Gontard Metallbank (GMB.DE). Then came a trickle of spams for Amatech AG (TXAG.F). And then those were joined in quick succession by spams for Agiv Real Estate (AGV.DE). Yes, the German stock spammers have arrived.

Or spammer, since this all seems to be the work of a single sender. The actual spams are being sent — at the rate of several a day — over and over again to a single address. The spammer has apparently invented the address they're using, which is 'mail@' one of the domains that acts as a spamtrap source for this site. That domain has nothing to do with stocks, nothing to do with Germany and the 'mail@' address for the domain has never been published anywhere in any shape or form. It's also not a particularly well-known domain, making it doubly mysterious that the spammer should have chosen that one rather than any other.

The spams are written in German. My knowledge of German lies somewhere between non-existent and less than minimal, so I can't tell you whether the spelling and grammar is as bad as in their English-language counterparts. However, I can puzzle out enough of the messages to be able to tell you that they seem eerily similar in most respects: KAUFEN KAUFEN KAUFEN KAUFEN ('Buy buy buy buy') reads one, Die Wochenend-Rallye ist gestartet ('The weekend rally has begun') says another, Laut unserer Chartanalyse* hat die Aktie enormes Potential ('According to our chart analysis, this share has enormous potential.'). And just as in the English-language spams, they make sure to include a preposterous 7-Tage-Ziel ('7-day target'). If this isn't an American spammer using Google Translate, I'd say that someone in Germany has been following the US model fairly attentively, because they're practically clones. I haven't yet learned what the German for "THIS STOCK WILL EXPLODE ON MONDAY!" is, but it's only a matter of time.

If anyone happens to know what the German equivalent of the SEC is and where I can contact them, I'd be happy to pass them a few samples.