Spam Kings (13 page)

After nearly two years of nonstop spamming, Davis Hawke finally started to make some
serious money in the summer of 2001. Instead of earning a couple hundred dollars per week,
Hawke suddenly measured his cash flow in the thousands as he racked up orders for Power Diet
Plus
. And it wasn't as if he was working any harder. In fact, Hawke had discovered
that business operated most smoothly when he sent out spams only from Friday evening through
Sunday evening. System administrators at ISPs tended to take off weekends, so they couldn't
respond to complaints about Hawke's spamming until Monday. By then, his messages were
already waiting in the in-boxes of hundreds of thousands of people.

The schedule essentially left Hawke with a five-day weekend. While the working stiffs of
the world were chained to their desks, he was taking hikes in the woods with his wolf
Dreighton
, working on his knife-throwing technique, or polishing up his archery skills.
Hawke also whiled away his time reading chess books and polishing his playing skills against
online opponents through an interactive system called Internet Chess Club.

But as Hawke watched the ever-larger deposits from his credit card processor arrive in
his bank account, he got nervous. The money seemed too vulnerable there. One day he withdrew
a couple thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Using rubber bands, he tightly wrapped
the stack of bills in heavy black plastic sheeting and placed them in a plastic bottle.
Hawke put the bottle and a small spade in a backpack and headed on foot with Dreighton deep
into Tennessee's Cherokee National Park. When Hawke located a good spot, away from any
trails but near some memorable landmarks, he dug a hole and buried the bottle. It would be
the first of several stashes of cash that he would refer to as his "deposits."
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3
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At the end of June, Hawke decided to go to Philadelphia for the 2001 World Open chess
tournament. With Patricia staying behind to run QuikSilver, he headed out on the nine-hour
drive north. To keep himself alert, he listened to books on tape, including
A
Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking. Hawke had read the Cambridge
University professor's book a few years before, but he still found himself mesmerized as he
motored up I-81 while a British narrator read Hawking's explanation of Einstein's theory of
relativity and other concepts of astrophysics.

The tournament was held in a large hotel in the northwestern suburbs of Philly. Hawke
found the conference room set aside for registration and began filling out an entry form
using his Walter Smith pseudonym. As he was leaning over the table, Hawke heard a loud voice
behind him.
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"Britt Greenbaum? Yo, is that you Britt?"

Hawke winced and turned around. He recognized Mauricio Ruiz, a talented chess player he
hadn't seen since he left Massachusetts. Ruiz was a good looking, happy-go-lucky guy, a
couple of years younger than Hawke.

"Hey, Maury," he said cautiously.

"What have you been up to lately, Britt? I hardly recognized you."

Hawke shot a glance at the woman working the registration table and took a step toward
Ruiz.

"Call me Walter now, ok?"

"No problem...Walter," said Ruiz.

Ruiz invited Hawke to join him in the skittles room down the hall, where players hung
out and challenged each other in informal matches. Hawke agreed to meet him there after he
finished registering.

Hawke liked to think of himself as imperturbable, but bumping into Ruiz had knocked him
a bit off balance. Hawke had known Ruiz since 1991, when they met at a chess tournament in
Providence, Ruiz's hometown. Hawke was just thirteen at the time, and Ruiz was eleven. But
the younger boy had already established a higher USCF rating, and earlier that year had won
the national sixth-grade chess championship. Still, Hawke managed to finish the tournament
in twelfth place, one place ahead of Ruiz. Over the next several years the two occasionally
crossed paths at tournaments in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Mauricio's dad, like Hawke's
parents, sometimes entered tournaments with his son. Rolando Ruiz played in the same
division as Hy and Peggy Greenbaum, and the adults struck up a casual friendship.

Hawke didn't face Ruiz directly in tournament play until 1995. By then, Mauricio was
clearly the stronger player, having established a USCF rating of around 2100, while Hawke,
playing as Britt Greenbaum, had hit a plateau in the 1900s. Ruiz defeated Greenbaum in the
first round and went on to place third overall, with Britt coming in tenth. They hadn't seen
each other since that match.

When Hawke caught up with him in the skittles room, Ruiz was just about to sit down to a
five-minute blitz match against a kid who couldn't have been older than fourteen. As Ruiz
was setting up his pieces, he told Hawke he had been attending Bryant College, a business
school in Rhode Island. It was boring and he wanted to drop out, said Ruiz.

Hawke replied that he had quit college after his junior year and had gone into business
for himself. But before Hawke had a chance to provide the details, he was interrupted. Ruiz
loudly hailed a high-school-age kid who had just walked into the room.

"Brad Bournival, meet my old buddy Walter."

Bournival, a pudgy, brown-haired 17-year-old from New Hampshire, shook hands with Hawke.
Hawke asked him if he wanted to play a quick five-minute match for money.

"How much money?" asked Bournival.

"Five bucks a game," suggested Hawke.

"Nah, I think I'll pass," he said.

After someone offered to put up the money for Bournival, he relented. As Hawke and
Bournival were arranging themselves at a table and setting their time clocks, Hawke
scrutinized the younger player.

"What's your rating, by the way?"

Bournival hesitated. "Nineteen hundred."

"Good," said Hawke. "Me, too."

They ended up splitting two matches, with Hawke taking the first and Bournival beating
him in the second game. Hawke's matches with Bournival in the skittles room would be the
best he'd play in Philadelphia. After taking a draw in his first match, Hawke was beaten by
his next two opponents and decided to withdraw. His play gave him a
215
^th
-place finish out of 226 entrants in the open division.
Ruiz fared better, coming in 123rd. As it turned out, Bournival had lied to Hawke about his
rating, which was actually over 2100. But Bournival played above himself at the tournament.
He upset several stronger players—including William Mark Paschall, who had a 2500 rating—and
finished 90th overall.

Hawke and Bournival would cross paths again a few weeks later. In August of 2001, Hawke
returned to the Northeast to play in the U.S. Open tournament in Framingham, Massachusetts,
just outside of Boston. It was the closest he had been to his parent's house in over two
years. But he didn't even tell them he was in town. Instead, Hawke surprised his
grandparents on his mother's side by calling them at the last minute and asking if he could
crash there. They lived in Westwood and said he was welcome any time he was in the area.
(Hawke's grandfather, a vice president at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had
always seemed more amused than upset about Hawke's neo-Nazi period.)

The Framingham event was held in a Sheraton decorated on the outside to look like a
castle. Matches took place at long tables in large conference rooms lit by massive
chandeliers. Hawke, playing as Walter Smith, drew a player rated 1400 in the first round and
quickly dispatched him. Bournival similarly beat his first opponent, who had just a 1600
rating. The two met afterwards in the skittles room. This time, Hawke challenged Bournival
to a rematch of their five-minute game at twenty dollars per game.

Bournival laughed nervously. "Are you rich or something?"

"As a matter of fact, I am."

With a flourish, Hawke pulled out his wallet and opened it wide so Bournival could see
the contents. A thick collection of hundred-dollar bills was stuffed into it, easily
totaling $5,000.

"Where did you get so much money?"

"I'm a spammer," Hawke said proudly.

Bournival just stared at him. "What the hell is a spammer?"

Hawke was amazed that anyone alive in the year 2001 hadn't heard of spam. He explained
how he mailed out ads for diet pills and other products to email addresses all over the
Internet, and a percentage of people placed orders. He told Bournival he worked only a
couple days each week and spent the rest of the time playing chess or just hanging out. He
even had a girlfriend who lived with him and looked after the business when he was away at
chess tournaments.

Bournival listened intently as Hawke, whom he still knew as Walter Smith, described his
business. The two couldn't have been more different. Hawke's long, dark hair was tied in a
ponytail down his back, and his face was covered with a two-day-old beard. He wore a black
T-shirt and a silver skull on a chain around his neck. In contrast, Bournival was dressed in
a striped shirt with his hair neatly parted and gelled. He didn't regale Hawke with a
description of his own life, besides saying he would be a senior at West High in Manchester
and had been playing chess for just three years. Hawke assumed Bournival came from a boring,
middle-class background, and Bournival had no desire to correct that impression. He figured
Hawke wouldn't want to hear about how his parents divorced when he was ten. Or how he now
lived with his half-brother and his mother, who was a crack cocaine user, along with her
physically abusive black boyfriend, in a cramped two-bedroom apartment in a three-story
walk-up owned by Bournival's grandmother. Or how his mom kept several Pekinese dogs in the
apartment, none of which was entirely housebroken.

Yet somehow amidst that mayhem in Manchester, Bournival had taught himself to play
chess. He discovered chess as a freshman in high school during a 1999 visit to the games
section of the Yahoo! site. He immediately liked the game, so he joined the school's chess
team. A few months later, Bournival surprised many by winning the New Hampshire high school
chess championship. Soon after that, people were paying Bournival ten dollars an hour for
lessons. Chess was about the only thing that kept him from dropping out of school.

Time ran out before Hawke and Bournival got around to playing their skittles match. As
they headed out for the next round, Bournival said he wanted to hear more about QuikSilver
Enterprises
. Hawke suggested a poker game that night with Mauricio Ruiz and anyone else
willing to put up some cash. Bournival balked, never having played poker for money before.
But he agreed anyway. When he left the skittles room, Bournival had the uncomfortable yet
exhilarating feeling that Hawke could get him to do just about anything.
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As it turned out, Bournival somehow managed to win ten dollars at the poker table that
evening. Even better, he convinced Hawke to tutor him about spamming in exchange for half of
what he earned from spam. The two traded email addresses, and Hawke said he would be
contacting Bournival with instructions on how to get started.

In all other respects, it had been a mediocre tournament for Bournival. He beat the
players he should have but lost his rematch with Paschall, finishing
150
^th
out of 480 players. Hawke, competing as Smith, played
solidly as well, but pulled off no surprises en route to his
270
^th
-place finish.

But with his new spam income, Bournival would have all the money he needed to attend
tournaments anywhere in the country. Even though he had managed a 3.8 GPA his junior year,
Bournival departed Framingham knowing he would not return to West High that fall.

"You can call me Johnny," Hawke told him as they said goodbye.