The shadowy political committee backing an opponent of Broward Sheriff Scott Israel is using the talents of the man who boasted of making South Florida the “spam capital of the world.” In June, the “Citizens Over Public Safety (COPS)” political committee received a $5,000 in-kind contribution from Media Direct, Inc of Deerfield Beach. According to State election reports the hefty contribution was for an “email blast to million.” One could reasonably assume COPS made an email blast to one million Broward voters.

According to State business records, Scott Hirsch is the president of Media Direct, Inc. Hirsch, a Boca Raton resident, has a controversial record when it comes to email blasts. 

In 2003, TIME magazine called Hirsch a “spammer” who sold his email marketing company to Equifax for a reported $135 million dollar price tag. “Florida is home to more spammers than any other state, and Hirsch — likes to take credit for helping make Boca Raton ‘the spam capital of the world.'”

Another reports chronicle how Hirsch’s company went after the former customers of big companies. 

SPAM CAMPAIGNS

In 2006, published reports claimed Hirsch’s Naviant company lead spam campaign on the behalf of Miller Brewing Co, CitiFinancial, Sprint and General Motors. OReilly.com reported the “Miller campaign suggests that Equifax’s spamming, and Naviant itself, are alive and well. Customer-contact.net, the domain referenced in the Miller spam, is associated with former Naviant head and longtime ROKSO spammer Scott Hirsch. The IP address hosting the customer-contact.net domain belongs to Naviant.”

The Mad Finn blog reported Naviant used “e-pending” to spam customers. “E-pending is a term used for a spammer technique of finding your Email address using other information, usually your name and mail address. A spammer, in this case Miller Brewing, has your other information, but not your email address. They’ll trawl online databases for likely matches, and basically append their records of you with the Email address found with the search. E-pending is notoriously inaccurate and guaranteed to generate spam.”

Hirsch is not the first controversial figure associated with the anti-Sheriff Scott Israel committee.

CONSULTANT OWNS COPS DOMAIN

In April, REDBROWARD reported Broward Denocrat consultant Dan Lewis met with the backers of the Citizens Over Public Safety (COPS) political committee. On April 2, REDBROWARD first reported the committee backers hoped to use “COPS” to support the campaign of Democrat James Fondo. Sources told REDBROWARD the backers discussed tactics with Lewis including the use of his controversial “blue card” mailer. The pro-Fondo forces planned to use COPS to attack Israel while Fondo remains “above the fray.”

REDBROWARD uncovered website domain records which showed Dan Lewis, owner of JNAC Communications and Management Services LLC, purchased domains related to the COPS political committee. The domains were registered in late February 2016. The domains include CitizensOverPublicSafety.com and CitizensOverPublicSafety.net.

In December, REDBROWARD reported Lewis’ famously wordy emails touting his judicial candidates ended up in spam folders all across Broward.

Scott Hirsch made South FL the “spam capital of the world”