AOL to Dig Up Spammer's Garden in Search of Gold

One of America's biggest internet firms is getting its hands dirty in the fight against spam email: it plans to dig up the back garden of the parents of a notorious spammer because it believes he buried gold and platinum bars there.

AOL has won a judge's permission to send bulldozers and geologists to the property of Hyman and Peggy Greenbaum, in Medfield, Massachusetts, after a court ordered their son, Davis Wolfgang Hawke, to pay the company $12.8m (£6.7m) in damages.

Mr Hawke, who is believed to have made millions of dollars sending unsolicited pitches for drugs and pornography, did not show up at court, so AOL won the case by default. But it has been unable to track him down to obtain the money.

Ms Greenbaum says she has not spoken to her son in more than a year - though he did once tell her he had bought gold with his profits, she said, because it would be harder for a court to seize than expensive cars and homes. She says he may have buried the bars in the White Mountains, north of Boston.

"I don't care if they dig up the entire yard," Ms Greenbaum told Associated Press, though she and her husband are preparing a legal challenge.

"They're just going to make fools of themselves ... There's absolutely no reason for them to think that Davis Hawke would be stupid enough to bury gold on our property. My son is long gone."

Mr Hawke's notoriety preceded his involvement in spam. In 1999, as a college student, he attracted attention in the US as the leader of a web-based neo-Nazi group.

According to one estimate, Mr Hawke and his business partners made $600,000 a month from the spam scheme.

Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman, defended the company's plan to excavate the Greenbaums' garden.

"This exercise isn't something out of ... Treasure Island," he said. "This is a court-directed, judge-approved legal process that is simply aimed at responsibly recovering hidden assets."