News
Rizler pleads not guilty
Posted on August 26, 2005

Christopher William Smith, aka Rizler, charged with running a fraudulent online pharmacy will be placed in a halfway house and must wear an electronic monitoring device until he goes on trial, a federal judge ruled today.

Rizler has been in custody since his arrest Wednesday. A federal grand jury had indicted him on charges of selling addictive painkillers without valid prescriptions.

At a court appearance, Smith pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, wire fraud, selling misbranded drugs and money laundering.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis said Smith must reside at the halfway house until the trial begins, which could take many months since both sides are still preparing their cases.

Among the evidence listed in court records is a boatload of computer files and other data seized from Internet service providers who sold Web hosting to Smith. For example, a server confiscated from Everyones Internet, Inc. of Houston, Texas; and three servers confiscated from The Planet Internet Services of Dallas.

Also seized via search warrants was data from Ohio-based Jumpline.com, which hosted numerous Smith drug sites, including rxorderfill.com, digihealthcorp.net, supremeproductsltd.com, digihealthcorp.com, samedaypayday.com, licensedrx.com, receiverx.com, and netmeds.com.

Smith's attorney Joe Friedberg said he will need to conduct 300 interviews all across the country to prepare a defense.

Government attorneys sought to keep Smith in jail, arguing that he might flee the country to avoid prosecution. They alleged that Smith posed a public safety risk, citing domestic disputes with his wife and threats to her friends and family.

Friedberg countered that Smith has not violated restrictions placed on him after his arrest and that the domestic disputes were understandable given the pressures on the couple.

Federal agents shut down the business in May and seized more than $4 million in assets, including a $1.1 million house and luxury vehicles worth $1.8 million.

Smith was arrested June 30 when he stepped off a plane from the Dominican Republic. He was charged with criminal contempt of court for allegedly trying to set up an online pharmacy in that country.

In the Dominican Republic, Smith was a guest of Creaghan Harry, a man the government described as another notorious spammer.

While the government is looking to tighten the screws against Smith, they won't be going after his friend and fellow spammer Harry Creaghan after all. On July 13, the warrant for Creaghan's arrest was revoked and contempt charges against him were dropped.

According to the court documents, Harry, who runs a call center there, earned more than $2 million from Smith for telemarketing.

Harry said the call center he manages, Santo Domingo-based Americas Best Worldwide, was just one of many that took orders for Smith.

He said it had no other connection with Smith's new business.

"We basically got pulled in to this because Chris Smith decided to come down here," Harry told The Associated Press. "But we are not his company or even his call center. Taking pharmaceutical orders is only a small part of our business."

Harry acknowledged that Smith had stayed in his Santo Domingo apartment for a week in early June, but then left for a beach resort in Boca Chica, outside Santo Domingo, where he took up scuba diving.

He then went to the eastern island resort town of Punta Cana, Harry said.

"It just seemed Chris was on vacation," he said.

Though Smith mentioned over a few lunches in Santo Domingo that he planned to start up a new business, he didn't offer details, Harry said.

Whether it was a business trip or vacation, it ended with Smith going straight to jail when he returned to Minnesota.

Smith and his stepfather declined to comment on his legal troubles as he left the courthouse the next day after his release on $50,000 bail. Prosecutors also declined to comment on the case, citing the ongoing investigation.

Smith's father, Scott Smith, declined to comment for this story after initially agreeing to talk.

In an earlier interview with the Star Tribune, he portrayed his son as a business genius who dropped out of high school because he was bored.

"That spamming stuff they talk about, sometimes Chris may have been a middleman helping other business people, but he never broke the law. I'm sure of it," Scott Smith told the newspaper.

As Smith sat in Davis' courtroom, wearing orange jail garb and flashing an occasional forlorn smile at his father and wife, high-profile local defense lawyer Joe Friedberg conceded that Smith had violated the judge's May 20 injunction by taking $2,000 from a frozen account.

But Friedberg contends the government hasn't proven that anything else Smith did in the Dominican Republic was illegal.

RELATED STORIES
July 8, 2005 Spam king Christopher 'Rizler' Smith to be released on $50,000 bail
July 6, 2005 Spam king defies judge's orders, got caught and goes to jail
June 16, 2005 Spam pays off, doesn't it Harry?
May 20, 2005 Another major spammer smackdown
SOURCE: Star Tribune; SpamKings