In a telephone interview, Dave Bridger claimed not to recognize the term "spam" or to know what a Web site is and said he worked as a manager in a McDonald's restaurant. In a subsequent online interview, Bridger said he would agree to an interview only if paid $20,000.

"I don't have time, make too much money, my time is very expensive," said Bridger.

How much money is he making? That question is essentially unanswerable, but earlier this year, Amazing Internet took new offices and warehouse space beside other high-tech companies in a refurbished mill complex in Manchester, N.H. -- a space previously occupied by the U.S. Senate campaign of Jeanne Shaheen, the state's former governor.

According to a former Hawke associate, the neo-Nazi turned spammer boasts of earning "six figures" and often carries around a wad of hundred-dollar bills in his pocket, totaling thousands of dollars. (The former associate, when shown a photograph of Hawke, also confirmed that "Bridger" was Hawke, although at the time of their association, Hawke/Bridger was using the name Johnny Durango.)

Hawke has signed up scores of Pinacle sales affiliates, although only a few dozen may be active. The bottles of pills are sold for $50 to the end user, but Hawke pays his own supplier only five bucks, and he pays his affiliates another 10 for each sale made via their own spam campaigns. In the low-overhead spam business, that could mean relatively high profit margins.

Customer satisfaction may not be ideal, however. These days, when Bridger's cell rings it could as easily be an irate customer as another direct sale or affiliate wanting to sign up. After all, the Federal Trade Commission says the cocktail of herbs listed on the label isn't proven to grow bigger penises. One of the ingredients, yohimbe, may stimulate the central nervous system and is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But it can also cause kidney failure or kill people with heart problems, the FDA warns.

There are no such caveats in the red-and-blue-lettered e-mails touting Amazing Internet's Pinacle pills. They usually arrive with a subject line such as "Grow your penis 2 inches in 2 days" and assure recipients that Pinacle is "completely safe."

The closest thing to a health warning in the ads or the Web site for ordering Pinacle is this helpful advice: "Remember, a penis larger than 9 inches may be too large for most women. But IF for some reason you need even more, it is possible for you to safely continue taking Pinacle."

So far, no one has publicly complained about Pinacle. According to FTC spokesman Richard Cleland, the agency doesn't have the resources to track down people like Hawke and charge them with making deceptive efficacy claims.

While the wording of his e-mail solicitations for Pinacle affiliates suggests Hawke prefers the expression "bulk mailer" to the term "spammer," the FTP logs left on Amazing Internet sites leave no doubt about the company's business. One log from AIP's site Myselinak.com in early July, for example, recorded a transfer from the operator's PC with the following directory: C:\spam\campaigns\Pinacle.

Forrest is credited with being the first to connect Hawke with the various spam campaigns run by Quiksilver. Yet he admits he's frustrated that, despite his efforts, Hawke has prevailed in the spam business for more than three years.

Hawke's reemergence as a spammer doesn't surprise Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group in Alabama that tracks hate groups.

"I think he is basically a petty criminal. He's a gang leader, a cultist. He was always about forming groups in which he's the Führer. And I think that's probably the case again here," says Potok.

Potok is not concerned, however, that Hawke will use his profits from spam to bankroll a new neo-Nazi movement.

"He wouldn't last five minutes in the movement. His name is mud. That's an insurmountable problem -- your father is Jewish," says Potok. "He got so much mockery at the time. He was just destroyed by the stuff."

While Hawke's career as a white-power leader may be finished, one of his former Web sites suggests that if he decides to return to political life, it may be as a Rhode Island Libertarian.

In early 2001, Quiksilver used a site named PrivacyBuff.com to sell books with titles such as "The Spambook," as well as a collection of tips and programs called "The Banned CD."

According to a message from "Dave Milton" on the "Who We Are" page at the site, "I am a libertarian and everyone who works for me is a libertarian ... we also favor the legalization of all drugs, an end to all taxes, and the abolition of the criminal justice system."

Then again, it's always been impossible to know whether the opportunistic, chameleon-like Hawke ever truly embraced a political philosophy -- or was simply posturing and spouting a credo to make a sale.

Recent Stories