Spam �� Best Served Cold - Industry Trend or Event

If you think your inbox is too full, just be thankful you don't work at Morgan Stanley. Between April 9 and April 17, a pair of angry clients allegedly barraged 25 Morgan Stanley senior executives with more than 3,000 e-mail complaints.

That was just their latest salvo. According to separate suits filed by Morgan Stanley, Prudential Securities and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, execs at the brokerages received more than 80,000 e-mail and voicemail messages in the month of March alone, all from the same ticked-off twosome, who had accounts at all three firms.

"It peaked at thousands a day," says Mike Hogan, general counsel at DLJ parent CSFB Direct. "Individual mailboxes were inundated to the point where people couldn't get their work done."

The e-mail-happy couple -- Neil and Penelope Wotherspoon of Brooklyn, N.Y., -- claim they were ripped off to the tune of $1 million and say in e-mail messages they "have a right to demand the return of... assets held as ransom by these firms." According to court papers, the couple claims some of their account transfers were never credited and that certain executives stole money from them. (The words "larcenous," "lying" and "goons" allegedly appear throughout the Wotherspoons' correspondence.) The brokerages deny the charges.

The Wotherspoons started their campaign by sending complaint messages to the companies' customer service addresses. They then figured out the naming protocols for each brokerage's e-mail system and began addressing execs individually. When the IT departments tried to block their access, the couple switched e-mail accounts and addressed new victims.

A New York court issued a temporary restraining order against the Wotherspoons on April 20. The case goes back to court May 22, when the brokerages will seek to make the order permanent. In the meantime, the execs may want to take a crash course in e-mail filtering.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Standard Media International
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group