Until yesterday, nobody in federal court in Philadelphia had been found guilty of a criminal violation of the e-mail law. Abadie was charged here because some of the e-mail recipients lived in the area.
Authorities said that between Aug. 1, 2005, and May 2006, Abadie, a/k/a "Superhawk," sent millions of spam e-mails a week to market pills purported to contain herbal or natural weight-loss and human-growth-hormone supplements.
Court papers said Abadie worked on commission on behalf of Sili Neutraceuticals and its sole officer, Brian McDaid.
McDaid and Abadie agreed that Abadie would get a commission of 30 to 40 percent of the sales price if an e-mail recipient visited a website assigned by McDaid to Abadie and purchased McDaid's pills, authorities said.
Before his arrest, Abadie told postal inspectors that he knew the e-mails were illegal but that he sent them to make extra money to supplement his pool-cleaning business, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Tsao told the court.
Abadie received $22,318 in commission from McDaid and Sili Neutraceuticals for sales resulting from the e-mails, the indictment said.
Tsao told the court that Abadie sent the e-mails through offshore proxy servers - with falsified header and subject information - which make e-mails difficult to trace.
The e-mails also didn't explain how a recipient could opt out of getting future e-mails from Abadie, authorities said.
Two other alleged spammers - both of whom have pleaded not guilty - were charged separately, Tsao said, because they worked independently of each other and Abadie.
In August 2007, McDaid and Sili Neutraceuticals were sued by the Federal Trade Commission in federal court in northern Illinois. A federal judge there entered a judgment against the defendants in January 2008 for almost $2.6 million.
