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March 10, 2005

Net legend Terri DiSisto

Over on the Nanae anti-spam newsgroup today, someone was asking about the current whereabouts of David D'Amato.

D'Amato is one of the strangest spammers profiled in Spam Kings. He was an assistant principal at a high school on Long Island (NY) who apparently had a tickling fetish. In the late 90s, he posed on the Internet as "Terri DiSisto" and claimed to be a female college student in Massachusetts. Using this alias, he sent out millions of spams to newsgroups and email accounts, soliciting videos of young men being tickled.

"Terri" made regular appearances on Nanae, where "she" argued about spamming and other topics. An anti-spammer who used the alias "Rob Mitchell" made it his personal mission to track down Terri and get her to stop spamming.

D'Amato eventually was convicted of sending email bombs to college students who got on his wrong side. He was released from prison in February 2002.

So, what is D'Amato doing these days? No idea. He had hoped to become a student at Fordham Law, but his conviction interrupted that. To my knowledge, he's still living in New York and has given up spamming. Google turns up this recent sighting on a Sept. 11 message board. "Terri" even has her own entry as a Net Legend.

Posted by brian at March 10, 2005 11:25 AM

Comments

Posted by: AnotherFella at March 14, 2005 1:45 AM