{"id":4172,"date":"2005-05-11T09:28:38","date_gmt":"2005-05-11T13:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4172.html"},"modified":"2005-05-11T09:28:38","modified_gmt":"2005-05-11T13:28:38","slug":"it-had-to-be-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-had-to-be-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"It had to be Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, I shared my theory<\/a> that all of the world’s ails relate, in some cases directly, to the state of Florida (where I was born and raised). After the Elian Gonzalez controversy, the 2000 election debacle, the original anthrax letters, the flying lessons for the 9\/11 terrorists, and the Terri Schiavo matter, it’s only natural to wonder how the state became such a blight on the nation.<\/p>\n

But as Michael Froomkin noted<\/a> yesterday, it gets worse. You know all that awful spam that keeps creeping into your email inbox? Guess where it comes from<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No place does spamming and scamming quite like South Florida.<\/p>\n

Together, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties are home to more spammers than any country<\/i> on Earth. And it’s not just the annoying pitches for mortgages and sex pills. Increasingly, law enforcement officials are finding that junk e-mail is a favored weapon of predators, an easy way for criminals to target a world of potential victims from behind a wall of anonymity.<\/p>\n

More than a quarter of about 180 hardcore spammers tracked by watchdog group Spamhaus are based in Florida, and most of those are in the tri-county area. The city with the most spammers in the world is Boca Raton. Eleven are listed by Spamhaus as based there, though anti-spam groups say they think that figure misses dozens who send spam at least part-time.<\/p>\n

Why South Florida? Spammers and anti-spam groups cite a combination of reasons. They include the warm weather and laid-back lifestyle, lenient bankruptcy laws, proximity to Internet data centers, a history of telemarketing and e-mail marketing, and the state’s longstanding image as a good place to do dirty business.<\/p>\n

South Florida is so notorious that some experts attributed a short-term decline in global spam after last year’s hurricanes to the assumption that the storms disrupted spammers’ operations.<\/p>\n

And the FBI’s North Miami office receives so many fraud complaints that only major cases get the bureau’s attention. “If you come in with a $1 million case, we’ll put you in line with all the others,” said LeVord Burns, supervisory special agent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is anyone surprised by this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, I shared my theory that all of the world’s ails relate, in some cases directly, to the state of Florida (where I was born and raised). After the Elian Gonzalez controversy, the 2000 election debacle, the original anthrax letters, the flying lessons for the 9\/11 terrorists, and the Terri Schiavo matter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}