Career
According to some estimates, his ads reached 25 million users at his peak, between 2003 and 2004. Although only Muscovites were eligible to sign up, the ads went to many other countries, including Ukraine, the United States and Israel.
Over the course of 2004 his output began to fall. He was almost completely forced off public email systems and resorted instead to using pager network ICQ.
Public opprobrium against him was so great that his personal information was widely posted throughout the internet. The country's deputy minister of communications, Andrey Korotkov, recorded a message urging Kushnir to stop what he was doing, and Golden Telecom, one of the country's larger Internet Service Providers, set up a computer that dialed ALC's telephone numbers continuously, playing Korotkov's message. The company's website also became the target of DDOS attacks, and its phone numbers were posted anywhere and everywhere on the Russian-language web, as contacts for anything from sex to cheap real estate.
During 2002-2005 Kushnir and his company attempted to use RiNet ISP for connectivity but was turned away numerous times and finally managed to connect via a neighborhood SOHO-styled company. It is worth noting that Kushnir did not send E-mail spam directly from his connection.
A lawyer named Anton Sergo filed a complaint with the Antitrust Authority which oversees advertising in Russia. Kushnir at first snubbed the hearings, until proceedings were started against him for noncompliance. He finally showed up and said he had no idea who was sending the ads. The complaint was dismissed.
Legal sanctions against him weren't limited to Russia. In April 2001, the state of Kansas ordered him and an associate, Florida resident Michael Walker, to stop their spam-promotion of stock in Sophim Inc., on the grounds that not only was Sophim not registered at the time, but neither he nor Walker were licensed brokers.
Those who knew him attributed his spamming, which his ALC partner disapproved of and which did not really generate much business for the center, to megalomania: "He only did it because he was obsessed with it. He wanted to be somebody, to be recognized somehow. So he way overdid it."
According to former employees, he was strongly influenced by Scientology and made hiring decisions based on the results of a 400-item questionnaire derived from a Scientology text.
Read more about this topic: Vardan Kushnir
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