Steve Sedlar began soliciting for pictures of boys (and their home addresses) by spamming child/parent oriented usenet groups in April 1999 (Coincidently, the precise date was April 13 - the same date he was to open his LoganSperman2 account on YouTube seven years later).
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| JFB1998 |
Calling himself Steven Lucas (presumably after two of his heroes, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas) he concocted the story that he was working for the promotions department of a company called Just For Boys (JFB). JFB supposedly traded in clothing and accessories for boys (wristbands?) and was seeking out parents of boys (it's always boys, never girls) to submit photographs of their children to their website. JFB also offered to send clothing to the boys to model in, be photographed and then have the pictures sent back to Steven. The "models" were promised that they could retain any of the clothing and accessories if they so wished.
"Hi, we are starting a new online sales area of our website which sells clothing and accessories for boys (all ages from tots to teens), called JUST FOR BOYS. We are looking for parents of kids that would like to model some of our items and be featured on our website"
Steve Sedlar was immediately brought to task by several other posters yet he continued to spam this post for several more days - and each time the opposition grew stronger and more vociferous.
"He doesn't direct you to the web page so you can see his products, and he gives you a hotmail address, not a corporate one, where you should send the pictures. Parents of boys, please be cautious. Something sounds wrong about this." says someone called Davidson.
"Please list your website address. Both your email addresses are free email addresses. Is this really a legit business?" asks Sara.
Steve attempts to explain why his "legitamate" company was using a hotmail email account and hosting its website on a free web server.
"Hi, we are currently using Hotmail (and DejaNews for posting) because we are in the middle of moving our site, we needed a consistant address that would not be affected by any movies. When we secure our domain name we will use another email address as well as our Hotmail one. We have had our contest page online for over a year and are just starting to introduce some online sales. You can currently find our site on the Prodigy server at http://pages.prodigy.com/contest If you have any other questions or comments, please let me know. Thanks!"
"Personally, I wouldn't touch that message with a ten-foot pole." opines concerned mother, Vicki Surratt.
"I just did a search for JFB Online Promotions and can't find anything on them. I agree with Davidson that this sounds way fishy!" exclaims Red.
Feeling angry and incensed that people may even be suggesting that he is a pervert and spammer, Steve responds with this very long winded and indignant reply:
I wanted to address the issues brought up about our previous post in this group. First, we are a legitamate company that is listed in the ComFind Internet company directory, (although the phone number they have for us is not currant). Our company name is JUST FOR BOYS, not JFB Online Promotions.The latter is just the division I work in, promoting the online presence of JFB. We have had a mail order division for over 2 years, and have had an online presence with our contests for over a year. The message posted was NOT an advertisement, or "spam". It was directed at the participants of this parenting group. The intent of the post was NOT to sell anything, and we did not include a web URL because that would imply that we were, when our purpose was just to find some parents and kids that would be interested in being models for some of our online products. For the record, our website (which has been primarily contest-oriented) is up on the Prodigy server at http://pages.prodigy.com/contest
We have been involved in ongoing legal consultations concerning the domain www.justforboys.com (which is now owned by a porn business) about using our company name, but as for now our site remains on the Prodigy web server. The reason we use Hotmail for email contacts at this time is because of the same reason, we are in the process of claiming our permanant web domain, and the HotMail address will be active regardless of our web host, which is important. We use DejaNews to post for this reason also, in addition to the fact that the DejaNews address will prevent us from being spammed which ties up are ability to access legitamate email inquiries. We are just recently (Easter) started offering some of our products online for sale in addition to the contests. For our PRINT CATALOGS, we ONLY use models hired from agencies. I only work in the online division, so I might have been wrong about union. But I do know that we do NOT hire independant models for print work, we only use those who are drawn from talent agencies. We decided that since we recieived so may requests about modeling opportunities from our contests, we would use photos submitted to us by our customers wearing our products instead of professional models for our online sales pages. We are not budgeted to pay for professional models for online sales pages, and saw this opportunity to select "real" people send in pictures, and reimbuse them by letting them keep the items we send for them to model, and the exposure they would get by being on our website. We are not in the business of talent management or modeling, BUT any requests we would get from talent agencies or management about any models on our site would be forwarded to the parent/guardian. We also do NOT reveal any personal info like address or email address to the public. As far as sending items to be modeled, we do not require a street address, a PO Box or any other address is just as suitable. We also are not asking for any money for this. We wanted to ask around to find some kids that might want to be model for our site to launch the WebModels program which will be available only to customers who buy the products and would like to have their kid's picture on our site. As far as the dangers of digital pictures versus print pictures, there is no real difference, since anyone who wishes to "alter" any picture in any way can easily scan a hard copy of a picture into digital form. An online picture is as safe, if not safer, as a picture of your kid in his school yearbook, or in the local newspaper or magazine, since those meadia forms get more circulation than a website. I hope this helps to clear up some of the concerns that various people here have had. If not, or if anyone has any other questions or comments, please feel free to send them to me, privately or publically. Thanks!
Steven J. Lucas
JFB Online Promotions
Steven becomes more irate and defensive.....
I will say this once again, the post I made was NOT advertisement. I posted it here because it had to do with PARENTING. I have seen posts before about kids modeling, and I was letting parents know of this. If it is non-profit it certainly is not against any FAQ. If it is, than half of all other posts here are in the same category, why don't you direct your attack to them? For example, every time someone mentions any brand name in a post, or about a contest, or about a commercial website, I guess that, in your definition, would be SPAMMING and/or "advertising" as well. Why is that not against the FAQ? Because it is ridiculous, that's why. If someone ELSE posted the message I did, would that be advertising? It is just letting other parents know of something they might be interested in. It is ON TOPIC, and NON-PROFIT. Now thanks to someone who obviously has too much free time, the Hotmail email address I mentioned in the original post has been suspended, which now will just take up more of our time to straighten things out with them, (since they obviossly did not even check into the matter before suspending the account). The post was NOT even posted from the Hotmail address, and the address was not even mine, but of an entirely different outfit who handles contests. We are in the process of finding out who is falsely reporting us as "abusers" and will take legal action against those individuals. Yes, it is against most every providers' rules to SPAM and abuse the Internet, and rightly so, but it is also against the rules, and a CRIME, to ruin someone's integrity as well as damages to someone's business, by false accusations such as this. Yes, TURN IN SPAMMERS and those making ILLEGAL postings and activity, (last time I browsed this group. there were MANY), but make sure you are not going after someone who is innocent, and consider the damages that can cause if you do. It is NOT something anyone should do frivilously, and should be taken very seriously. If you want to turn in someone, why not scroll up and turn in the sicko's the perverts, illegal spammers, etc., that no one even gives a second thought to? Why attack me who just posted a note about a website with a new non-profit modeling program, or about a contest we are running, etc. THAT is something I just do not understand. It is beyond nit-picking. If someone has a personal grudge against us, please just let us know and we can hopefully work things out. I just canot conceive the idea of passing up the porn posts, illegal posts, money making scemes, and all of the other posts which CAN cause serious harm to kids and anyone else, and target me, who was just basically posting about a website that parents and kids interested in modeling would be interested in. If you have so much free time, please use some to explain that to me.
Steven Lucas
on YouTube will instantly see the remarkable similarities in the the writing styles of "Steven Lucas" and "Logan Sperman".
