Starting on 20-Feb-2004, I suddenly started getting a mountain of rejection bounces from AOL mailservers, for email that did not originate at this domain.

Please bear with me while I state this again -- this spam email never came from PerennialVintners.. It is a pure and simple case of identity theft -- in Internet jargon, this is called a "joe job" (openrbl.org).

You'll find a sample below with the AOL names replaced with "fakename" to protect the innocent bystanders; use this to compare with the spam you got. Note that this particular one originated at "hinet.net" -- click on the link in the note for more info about this creep. If you care to take the time to understand, using the guide below, you'll be able to determine for yourself that indeed the spam you got was entirely fictitous.

The "Reply-To:" header on these emails is always a made-up email name at PerennialVintners.com. As described in other pages on this website, Perennial Vintners is a family organization, proudly run by Mike Lempriere and wife Beth. Any other email name than "mike", "beth" or the standard "abuse", "postmaster", and "hostmaster"), is obviously bogus. Please bear in mind that this website was established 22-Jan-2000 -- the evidence has been here for a long time.

The bounce mail I receive includes the headers, but does not include the actual mail, so I have no evidence of what this creep is trying to peddle under my name, beyond the fact that the subject mentions "Meds", so I presume it's another offshore pharmacuetical rip-off. Please feel free to forward me one of the spams so I can at least know how badly I've been abused. (Click here to send email to mikel).

Being an avid anti-spam fighter, it's been quite an experience being a victim of identity theft in this way.

Please visit my anti-spam project, the 'Outhouse' with which I protect my hosted website customers. You'll also find information here on how to decipher email headers. If you care to spend the time, you'll find that the email you received that purported to come from here, never actually did.

I wish I could apologize for something that I didn't do, but obviously that's not possible -- I ask that you please bear in mind that I am a victim in this awfulness, as well as you.

Thanks for your patience!

Mike Lempriere

20-Feb-2004