On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Gerald Combs wrote:

> On a historical note, one of the (if not _the_) first large-scale spam
> incidents was perpetrated by a couple of lawyers on Usenet who were
> offering Green Cards.  I was a news admin at the time, and witnessed the
> ensuing furor firsthand.

I recently read they got divorced and he lost his law license:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,5060,00.html

from the glossary at:

http://www.rahul.net/falk/glossary.html

The first major netnews spam was executed circa January of 1994 when a
junior admin at an Adventist college in Michigan named Clarence Thomas IV
spammed approximately 5000 newsgroups to warn everybody that Jesus was
coming. He was fired and the offending posts were cancelled. (See sample
post & amusing reply.) Shortly afterwards, Laurence Canter & Martha Seigal
spammed ~7000 newsgroups with the famous "Green Card" spam and the Second
Age of Usenet began. Canter & Seigal have since divorced, and Canter has
been disbarred (again), but their legacy lives on.