First, we proved conclusively that now-former Bruno employee Roger Stone is behind the email campaign being waged against Eliot Spitzer.

In the same post, we proved that the origin of Stone's list was in an email by Ben Smith of the Politico.

Then, we found out that the email and web campaign contains another shell: a web site, linkedcampaign.com, that is sending out all of the Stone emails. Linkedcampaign.com, like all the Stone web sites, was registered through a private registration service called Domains By Proxy. Wait, here are the headers:

Return-Path: (update@nyfacts.net)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])

Return-Path: (Stone@StoneZONE.com)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])

Return-Path: (info@SpitzerFile.com)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])

Return-Path: (WJMAHONEY@GOP-CLUB.COM)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])

Linkedcampaign.com redirects to is a ripped copy of a web site for a company called Vertical Response.

Here's the fun part: I cross-posted the post that contained that information on The Albany Project, here. This elicited a response from Vertical Response's Director of Policy, Richard Huffaker.

I'm the Director of Policy Enforcement at VerticalResponse. This post was just brought to my attention, and I want to state for the record that we have nothing to do with this linkedcampaign.com company. Their web page redirects to ours currently, but I can only assume this is being done with the goal of deflecting blame for their spam on to us (an owner of a domain can redirect that domain to point anywhere they want). I cannot stress enough that Linked Campaign is not a service we provide.

The kind of emails you're describing could not make it out through our system. There are several reasons for this:

1. We do not allow domain spoofing. All mail sent through our service must come through our mail.vresp.com domain. The only time we make exceptions for this rule is when a client works with our engineering team to give us permission to send mail on behalf of one of their subdomains. Jumping from domain to domain is simply not possible with our system.

2. We do not own the 24.199.182.6 IP Address (Road Runner owns that IP, and they are not one of our upstream providers. This means the email has been going through Road Runner).

3. We have very strict rules in place regarding the sending of mail. Our clients may only mail those people who have specifically requested info from or about their company. Nothing else is allowed. Signing people up through one site and mailing them information about another is prohibited. If they even managed to get one email out through our site it would almost certainly lead to complaints (we respond to all complaints) and the account would be banned.

You can read our anti-spam policy here.

The linkedcampaign.com whois page shows their info as being protected by "Domains by Proxy" as you noted. I am contacting Domains by Proxy to see what we can do to get their contact info and get this spammer domain pointed away from our site.

I would really appreciate it you could forward some of their emails to me: richard at verticalresponse.com. I would also appreciate it if the post could be corrected to show we were not involved with this issue. I am happy to discuss this by phone or email if you write me.

Thanks!

Done.

Vertical Response is in the favorable position of being able to take action vis-à-vis Domains By Proxy, since the shell domain redirect impacts their business and their brand by associating it with Roger Stone's sleazy campaign.

If the privacy veil for these sites is pierced, and there's good reason to expect just that, given that Vertical Response has a legitimate cause of action, it's to be expected that we'll find Roger Stone behind all of these efforts.

It gets even better. The New York Post seems to have turned on Stone as well, with a piece published today, entitled Psycho Rant at Gov Dad, by one Fredric Dicker. That article is in reference to a voicemail left on Bernard Spitzer's office phone; he is, of course, Eliot Spitzer's father. The audio is here.

Stone claims that this voicemail was actually left by Spitzer operatives.

Mr. Stone said: “They have unfettered access to my apartment. I am on television constantly. As Gore Vidal said, never pass up the chance to have sex or be on television. Putting together a voice tape that sounds like me wouldn’t be hard to do.”

Dude, that's just sloppy. Enter Occam's Razor to dispense with that: either Stone left that message, as confirmed by caller ID, or someone broke into his apartment, played a tape mimicking his voice into his phone, and did all that without leaving a trace.

Sorry, folks, but Roger Stone is falling apart. He's getting very sloppy indeed, and you have to wonder how much more damage he's going to do to his former boss, Joe Bruno.

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