Book Thrown at 2 Suspects in Spam Case

Ian Sweedler didn’t even need a babel fish to crack his case.

Instead, the California deputy attorney general used his love of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” to trace accused spammers who allegedly used bits of the offbeat novel to slip missives past e-mail filters.

A U.S. district judge in San Francisco on Wednesday froze the assets of Los Angeles residents Peonie Pui Ting Chen and Rick Yang after the state sued them for allegedly sending more than 1 million unsolicited e-mails. They face penalties of as much as $1 million per unwanted advertising campaign.

They might have been spared if Sweedler hadn’t shared their love of “Hitchhiker,” in which Earth is demolished to make way for a freeway and a babel fish translates alien languages for hapless humans.

Sweedler got involved last year after Microsoft Corp. forwarded suspect e-mails. Like many pieces of spam, they had text to trick filters. Looking at the text, “I just remembered the book,” Sweedler said. He found other “Hitchhiker” phrases and traced them to websites paid for with the same credit card.

Chen and Yang couldn’t be reached for comment. Their lawyer, John Chu, said in court that his clients were innocent.