BENNETT, Colo., July 25, 2008
"Spam King" Found Dead With Wife, Daughter
Convicted Spammer Escaped Prison, Apparently Killed Wife, Daughter And Self
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Play CBS Video Video 'Spam King' Suicide/Murder Convicted spammer Edward Davidson escaped from prison with the help of his wife. Then he apparently shot and killed her, their daughter and himself. Shaun Boyd reports.
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(AP / CBS)
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U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said Edward "Eddie" Davidson, whom the authorities called the "Spam King," and the other two were found at the home in a rural part of Bennett, about 25 miles east of Denver. He said Davidson shot himself.
Eid said the woman and girl were also dead from gunshots.
Authorities had been searching for Davidson, 35, since Sunday, when he and his wife drove away from a minimum-security federal prison in Florence, 90 miles south of Denver.
Davidson was sentenced April 28 to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay $714,139 in restitution to the IRS after pleading guilty to falsifying header information to send spam e-mail, tax evasion and criminal forfeiture.
"What a nightmare, and such a coward," Eid said. "Davidson imposed the 'death penalty' on family members for his own crime."
Arapahoe County undersheriff Mark Campbell said deputies rushed to a home in a subdivision in Bennett after receiving reports of shots fired.
Deputies found Davidson, who appeared to be the gunman, on the driver's side of an SUV in the driveway, and a woman dead on the passenger side.
A girl was found dead in the back of the car, Campbell said. A 7- or 8-month-old boy was found in a car seat uninjured.
Campbell said a teenage girl who was shot in the neck ran to a neighbor's house for help and has been hospitalized. He said the girl had serious injuries, but was coherent and talking when taken to the hospital.
Davidson's relationship to the teen and infant was unclear.
Campbell said they didn't live at the home, which sits on a 35-acre horse property in unincorporated Arapahoe County.
Neighbors told authorities that Davidson used to live in the house, according to Denver media reports.
Eid said that after leaving the federal prison complex in an SUV on Sunday with his wife, Davidson drove to the Denver suburb of Lakewood, got a change of clothes, cash, and then left.
Prosecutors said that from 2002 to 2005, Davidson's business, Power Promoters, and his subcontractors would spam people's inboxes with e-mails promoting items like watches and perfume.
Quote
during Davidson's April sentencing hearing
From 2005 through part of 2006, he sent thousands of e-mails from his home in Bennett, sometimes with false information, on behalf of a Houston company promoting a penny stock as an excellent investment, according to a plea agreement. His bank account deposits from 2003 to 2006 totaled $3.5 million, the plea agreement said."He obviously has some unresolved issues with regard to his childhood and how he was raised..."
U.S. District Judge Marcia Kriegerduring Davidson's April sentencing hearing
Prosecutors said they also found about $380,000 that he had stashed in his girlfriend's bank account over three years, and purchases totaling $418,000 from a company that sells gold, platinum, palladium and silver coins.
Prosecutors did not identify the girlfriend in court documents.
When Davidson was sentenced, U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger noted it was Davidson's first serious conviction, and that he was supporting three children, which documents did not identify. She noted Davidson had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A condition of his sentence was that he undergo mental health counseling.
"He obviously has some unresolved issues with regard to his childhood and how he was raised that he believes impair his ability to make good decisions in the future," Krieger said during the sentencing hearing.
Michael Arvin, Davidson's attorney during his criminal trial, did not return a phone message left after business hours Thursday.
State Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo, a critic of federal staffing at the Florence prison complex, criticized the U.S. attorney's characterization of Davidson's escape as a "walkway" rather than an escape that posed a risk to the public.
"It's time for the U.S. Attorney's office and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to refer to those who escape from prison, whether minimum security camps or high security prisons, for what they are, escapees," McFadyen told The Gazette of Colorado Springs.
"Three separate federal agencies, the U.S. Marshals, FBI and IRS, were all hunting him," she said. "If he's no danger to the public why were three agencies after him?"
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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See all 59 CommentsBecause they had not collected their fines from him, that is why.
I keep waiting for that to happen and I believe it''s not far off.
Spamming and hacking can affect millions of lives.
If a man knocked on your door every hour, at all hours, trying to sell you something you''d call the police and he''d be arrested for trespass.
How is spamming or hacking different than trespassing or burglary? Both are uninvited intrusions into your home or office.
Both need to be prosecuted.
If I had my way, we''d put a few of the big-time hackers against the wall and execute them. Word would get out mighty quick that the price of hacking might be a wee bit too high.
As it is, hackers are viewed as Robin Hoods, laughed about and end up writing books or interviewed on documentaries.
They''re criminals who endanger your well-being and imperil your life.
A .45 bullet should be downloaded into their cranial CPU.
ADVERTISING IS NOT A CRIME...
Posted by jw218389 at 11:53 PM : Jul 25, 2008
It is if I pay for spam free emails and still get them.
if they want to ''Spam'' me then ''give'' me a ''free'' service in exchange. Don''t make me pay to read your advertising. and then have to pay for the product too.
I won''t purchase any products or servia via spam.
I heard the first spam was the idea of an attorney on usenet.
They shouldn''t have had any cause to go after him because spamming shouldn''t be illegal. He wouldn''t have had to mask his identity if spamming hadn''t been criminalized. And of course you can''t report earnings from illegal activities. The real criminals are the ones who went after him. Get some good spam filtration and quit whining like a ***.
No, spam is not the same as murder, not even in the same league and it is somewhere between stupid and ignorant to say such a ridiculous thing. SPAM is created by the Internet.
I am not sorry for his wife - she deliberately helped a criminal get away from jail, which is an extremely dangerous risk, anyone doing so takes their life in their hands, she did, and she lost. I am sorry for the children, they did not deserve what happened and had no control over it. Let''s hope that the surviving teenager isn''t separated from her sibling in the aftermath.
: than the annoying billboards that litter our highways.
Wake up, pal. Spammers routinely break laws to hide their identities, to commandeer unsuspecting PCs used to send spam and they invade our privacy not only by intruding but by data mining as much personal information on us they can get. The only good spammer is a dead one. I only regret that he took other innocent lives.
''Spam control'' is just another excuse to charge you for emails just like the USPS charges you for letters.
ADVERTISING IS NOT A CRIME...
They shouldn''''t have gone after him the way they did for distributing spam. They would have deserved whatever he did to them as would anyone "stupid" enough to stand with them.
Posted by summarex at 05:03 PM : Jul 25, 2008
Actually, summarex, what "they" went after him for wasn''t really all that much about spamming. That''s the headline the newspaper people put on it to get your/our attention. To quote the article "restitution to the IRS after pleading guilty to falsifying header information to send spam e-mail, tax evasion". You skip out on enough $$ to the IRS & they''ll come after you every time. After all, that''s how the Feds brought down Al Capone.
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