For months I've been generally thinking of the idea that the Attorney General of California might be convinced to help California residents to prosecute spammers. The general idea is that where the spammer is committing a crime and is also in violation of California's anti-spam law which gives recipients of spam the right to sue for $1000 liquidated damages per spam message, the Attorney General might file criminal charges against spammer, then get subpoenas to require the ISPs hosting the spammers to reveal the identity of the spammers, then upon verification of that identity and research to learn the legal address of the spammers, the Attorney General would then share that information with any recipient of spam from that spammer, so that the victim can know whom to list as the defendant and where to have the court papers served.

• Collect expert opinion about known spammers (in the USA, or with affiliates in the USA) and their characteristics of the typical kinds of spam they send, including any known billing or shipping or contact addresses.
• Assess which spammers might be easiest to catch based on the above information. Sort the spammers into a priority list starting with the likely easiest to catch.
• Work down that list generating keywords that can be used by each victim to search for actual spam from each individual spammer that the victim has received. The AG = Attorney General might post lists of these keywords, soliciting residents to report any spam they've found when using these keywords as search terms.
• Victims who have received spam matching those keywords would submit reports of what they have found matching various keyword combinations. Staff of the AG would then assess those reports and use them to build a database of reports.
• Based on statistics of that database of collected reports, including whether there are reports of a particular spammer engaged in criminal behaviour, the list of spammers would be rearranged according to a weighted average of both number of worst criminal activites and ease of catching the spammer.
• The AG then files formal criminal charges against the topmost members of that new priority list, then depending on the exact circumstances for a given spammer:
  • AG arranges for federal marshalls or state police to go to a known location of the spammer and place the spammer and all his/her staff under arrest
  • AG goes to court to gets a subpoena to require each Internet Service Provider (in the USA) who has in any way aided the spammer (spam source, spam relay, maildrop) to release all records containing any information about that spammer's use of the ISP's facilities, including date&time of each login or other account activity, personal information used to sign up for an account, IP number where the spammer was connecting from to get access to the given ISP's facilities, credit-card information, and any other information related to the spammer's activities on that ISP and connected ISPs.
  • If any new ISPs are implicated due to IP numbers connecting to the given ISP, then the AG goes back to court to get additional subpoenas against those new ISPs and repeats the above process.
• As soon as the spammer and/or spammer's staff have been arrested, and each has been confirmed as somebody involved in arranging to have the spam sent out, the victims are notified of those facts and are provided with all information needed to file their civil lawsuits. The AG also arranges for free process serving on the spammers/staff on behalf of the victims who have filed lawsuits. The criminal and civil cases then run in parallel.

• Selling prescription drugs over the InterNet by unlicensed sellers, to people who don't need to show that they have a prescription for the particular drug being purchased (USC TITLE 21, CHAPTER 9, SUBCHAPTER III, Section 331. "Prohibited acts")
• Selling "replica watches" and counterfeit software etc. (USC TITLE 18, PART I, CHAPTER 113, Section 2320. "Trafficking in counterfeit goods or services")