One of the things that makes stock spam so hard to fight is that it's easy for the spammers to disassociate themselves from their messages. They don't need to give out a telephone number, an email address or the name of a website. They just need to send out the name of a stock that they're interested in and hope someone will buy. In theory, you might try to correlate spam campaigns with trading activity and identify the interested parties that way, but that's slow and complex, and the evidence tends to be circumstantial at best. For this reason, the identities of the big stock spammers are still mostly a mystery.

That may have just changed. The SEC has brought civil fraud charges against Darrel T. Uselton and Jack E. Uselton, two Texas men who they accuse of running a massive stock spam scheme using botnets. The Texas attorney general has also filed charges against the Useltons, alleging organized criminal activity and money laundering. The Texas AG has seized more than $4.2 million from bank accounts belonging to the two men and the SEC alleges that the Useltons may have defrauded investors of more than $4.6 million in all. Those numbers show just how much money is involved in stock spam.

I've been hearing the Useltons mentioned in connection with stock spam for a while. One of Darrel Uselton's own companies, uAuthorize Inc was promoted by spam and a number of commentators had raised serious doubts about uAuthorize. Not least because Darrel and his brother Mark had been fined and suspended by the SEC for previous improprieties.

Darrel was also chairman and CEO of another spam-advertised company, Ablaze Technologies. (Dino Price, who worked with Darrel at uAuthorize and was president of Ablaze, is noted in one article about Ablaze as having left the company to pursue business interests in Nicaragua, which may be the stock spam world's equivalent of spending more time with his family). Spam promoting Ablaze also implied a connection to IGTS.PK.

So much for Darrel. What about good old Uncle Jack? Well, he turns out to have 'form' as well. In 2002 Jack Uselton was barred from violating anti-fraud provisions following ... a pump-and-dump scam.

At this point, I'm kicking myself slightly. One of my informants has been sending me messages saying It's the Useltons, stupid for several months. I tend to be cautious about naming names because one slip can fill your life with lawyers and no one wants that. Nevertheless, just looking back at my own records I see that there were enough strands that could have been tied together to warrant a post pointing out some interesting 'coincidences'.

The list of companies allegedly promoted by the Useltons is long and includes many familiar names. The SEC press release about the indictments mentions:

Oretech, Inc.; Intelligent Sports, Inc.; Advanced Powerline Technologies; Notch Novelty Corporation; Avondale Resources Corporation; Spooz, Inc.; ESPRE Solutions, Inc.; Grifco International, Inc.; Leatt Corporation; Adrenaline Nation Entertainment, Inc.; Equipment and Systems Engineering, Inc.; Gulf Petroleum Exchange, Inc. (currently Software Effective Solutions Corp.); and Wentworth Energy, Inc.

One thing that emerges from a quick review of the archives is that the stocks that the Useltons are alleged to have promoted seem to have been advertised entirely by plaintext spam. For the most part, they were sent via botnets — as the indictment alleges — although in a few cases they include messages sent by a known affiliate/syndicated marketing spammer and one that appears to originate from the mysterious "Johnny Williards".

What I don't see in the archives for these companies are any image spams. Seemingly, whoever the Useltons (allegedly) went to for their botnet services didn't offer that particular feature. Which means that whoever is responsible for commissioning the tidal wave of image spam we've been subjected to over the last year or more, they're still out there.

With the indictment of the Useltons, the SEC may possibly have landed two biggish fish. But they haven't drained the pool yet.