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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/protectingid/0,3800002220,39119396,00.htm

Google pop-up 'blackmailer' arrested
'Pay $100,000 or I go to the spammers...'

By Jo Best

Published: Monday 22 March 2004

A US man has been charged with extortion after allegedly making demands for $100,000 from search giant Google - according to court papers he claimed that if they did not pay, he would release a piece of software to spammers to generate fake advertising hits and cost the company millions.

The man from California was so sure that the folks at Google would pay up, he even turned up at their offices for a meeting to sell his software. By then, the Feds were already on the case and videotaped the alleged extortion attempt.

The software that Michael Bradley designed would have flooded the Google adverts with fake clicks, costing the company millions – Google pays web publishers a fee for each click on the pop-ups the site generates. He threatened to give the software to the top 100 spammers in the meeting with Google's officials, court papers released on Friday show.

According to the court papers, he also offered his services as a consultant engineer to help the search engine stop other advertising fraud.

After he didn't hear back from the search engine staff about a payment, he sent an email saying he would release the software to the public – and the spammers - the following week. He was then met by what he hoped was a Google exec clutching a big bag of money – but who turned out to be a Federal agent with an arrest warrant instead.

Bradley was released on $50,000 bail, on the condition he has no contact with his computer or Google.