Page 5 of 5

Well, here's your answer -- and it should be no big surprise: It comes from South Florida. Specifically, from Boca Raton, home of the penny-stock swindle and the boiler-room sales pitch.

For as long as anyone can remember, this sunny, ocean-front town just south of Palm Beach has been a haven for racketeers big and small, with miles of offices housing shady telemarketers and fly-by-night brokerage firms. Even some of the area's Fortune-500 big shots have proven themselves as crooked as a dog's hind leg, the most recent examples being Tyco International and its prison-bound CEO Dennis Kozlowski.

In short, Boca Raton has incubated such a pervasive culture of fraud that the local Chamber of Commerce would do well to offer bonding services and discounted flights to non-extraditable destinations.

And yet, for all its long history as a mecca for con artists, cheats and petty chiselers, Boca's reputation has never before taken the beating it's getting now, thanks to its newest distinction as spam capital of the world.

According to Spamhaus, of the world's 150 most prolific spammers, Boca Raton is home to at least 40. But why Boca?

Theories for this phenomenon vary. One partial explanation is that the city lies along a segment of the Internet "backbone," the bundle of cables that form the actual infrastructure of the information superhighway. This enables spammers to send huge wads of e-mail more cheaply and efficiently.

While it's true that plenty of cities sit atop the Internet backbone, Boca is located in the Sunshine State, which, in addition to its warm weather, has the most liberal bankruptcy laws in the nation. Florida has long been a magnet for the shady set because of legal loopholes that allow crooks to shield their ill-gotten fortunes from seizure.

One Boca denizen who isn't shy about discussing spam is Mark Felstein, a spotlight-hungry attorney who's taken on the thankless role of de facto spokesperson for the bulk e-mail industry.

During the course of our conversation, he defends e-mail marketing in a rambling monologue that's difficult to follow because of its many logistical pirouettes.

The problem, Felstein begins, is that e-marketing has been given a black eye because a few bad apples break the rules by using open relays, fake subject lines, bogus return e-mail addresses and non-functioning opt-out links.

When I point out that it's actually the rarest of spam that doesn't employ at least one of the deceptive practices he just described, he shifts gears.

"I don't know why so many people have a problem with bulk e-mail," he says, adding that if folks are getting spam at the office, "maybe these employees should be working instead of surfing the Web."

Then he offers his theory that public antipathy toward spam has been exaggerated by an anti-spam industry with a vested interest in painting bulk e-mail to seem like it's some kind of serious problem.

"The people who are making a big deal about this are trying to sell something," he explains, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

Felstein made news in Internet circles earlier this year by filing a lawsuit against Spamhaus and its stateside counterpart, the Spam Prevention Early Warning System, better known as SPEWS. The suit accuses the spam blacklist sites of libel, invasion of privacy and of attempting to "maliciously interfere with the business of the plaintiffs," who include several Boca-based e-marketers.

Felstein previously has sued various ISPs for denial of services for shutting out his spam-sending clients, but he concedes that those suits were busts because his clients invariably went broke before their cases got to court.

This time, however, he feels certain he will be able to teach a lesson to Spamhaus and other "self-appointed vigilante groups" that are making life tough for Internet entrepreneurs who are just trying to make a living.

Besides, he says, it's not like spam is so awful; if you don't want it, it's easy enough to delete it or opt-out.

"Maybe some ISP like MSN has to spend a few bucks it didn't plan on," Felstein says, "but no one's getting hurt by bulk e-mail."