Scott Richter (born July 18, 1971) is the CEO of Media Breakaway, formerly known as OptInRealBig.com LLC. Other related companies are Dynamic Dolphin and affiliate.com.
He paid $7 million to Microsoft in 2006 in a settlement arising out of a lawsuit alleging illegal spam activities. Richter was listed in the ROKSO top 100 spammers, but is no longer included there. His company once sent some 100 million emails a day. One of the most famous emails was the offer of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards in 2003; Richter claims to have sold 40,000 decks before they were even printed.
New York Attorney General sued Richter in December 2003. Facing a $500 million judgment in Washington state from the Microsoft case, in March 2005, OptInRealBig.com filed for bankruptcy protection. It claimed to have assets of less than US$10 million and debts of more than $50 million. Microsoft's refusal to settle a $20 million claim based on Washington state spam law is what forced OptInRealBig to file for bankruptcy. Steven Richter, who is Scott Richter's father and President and General Counsel of Scott's company, commented "OptIn is profitable but for these lawsuits."
He was interviewed on The Daily Show by Rob Corddry on 30 March 2004.
In January 2007, his company Media Breakaway was sued by popular social networking website MySpace for allegedly gaining access to members' accounts and using them to send millions of spam messages appearing to be from users' MySpace "friends". Steven Richter, President and General Counsel of the company, denied the allegations.
Media Breakaway is the owner of Dynamic Dolphin, Inc, an ICANN accredited registrar who, according to KnujOn, is one of the few Internet registrars that serve the majority of spamvertised web sites.
An arbitrator on June 16, 2008 awarded MySpace $ 4.8 million in damages and $ 1.2 million in attorney's fees against "spam king" Scott Richter and his Web marketing company, Media Breakaway LLC, of Westminster, Colo., "for barraging MySpace members with unsolicited advertisements." The award was 5% of the amount demanded by MySpace. MySpace alleged that due to Scott, "some of the messages were sent from accounts whose sign-on information had been hijacked by phishing."
The latest allegations against Media Breakaway are that they charge unsuspecting people with charges on their cellphone bill for supposedly free Ringtones.
Famous quotes containing the words scott and/or richter:
“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.”
—Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825)