New York, Aug 27: Free cash, human growth hormones and penile pills are not available at Amazon.com Inc.AMZN.O , and the Internet's biggest retailer is suing marketers who use its name to sell those products to unwary consumers. Amazon said on Tuesday it is seeking millions of dollars in punitive damages from 11 online marketers in a crackdown against e-mail advertisements that falsely bear the Amazon address and sully its name.
Amazon's lawsuits, filed in the United States and Canada, raise the profile of marketers fighting an onslaught of "spoofers" who use brand names in their e-mail addresses to lure unsuspecting customers.
Advertisers say the forgeries, part of the explosive growth of unsolicited e-mails called spam, hurt their brand credibility with consumers and damage the Internet as a legitimate direct marketing channel.
In one case, the New York Attorney General's office worked with Amazon to reach a settlement with Cyebye.com, owned by a Brooklyn-based home appliance retailer.
Cyebye.com agreed to pay New York state $10,000 in penalties, keep records of future commercial e-mails and stop using other companies' names in its marketing without permission. The company also reached a preliminary deal with Amazon for an unspecified sum, Amazon said.

But for every case closed, many new scams abound.
In its other lawsuits, Seattle-based Amazon charged companies from Colorado to Ontario with advertising hormone therapies, organ enhancements and auto warranties via e-mails ending in the address "@amazon.com."

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Last week, the Citibank division of Citigroup Inc.C.N had to warn its customers against an e-mail scam that sent a phony message in the bank's name demanding Social Security information. E-mail spoofs have also impersonated Internet companies such as Yahoo Inc.YHOO.O and eBay Inc.EBAY.O

"This is a kind of Internet fraud ... and of course the most well-known or most-trusted companies are likely to be the most often attacked," said H. Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association that represents 4,700 businesses.

"Legitimate companies who are sending legitimate communications to their customers are discovering that fewer of those are being read," he said. "They were erroneously filtered out or the consumer is just not opening their e-mail."
The DMA is offering to help federal investigators and law enforcers pursue Internet wrongdoers in a program, dubbed "Operation Slam Spam," set to begin next month.

Wientzen estimates that the bulk of spam and spoof e-mails originate from 200-300 offenders worldwide and wants enforcement to include arrests and criminal charges.

In June, Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O , the world's largest software company, filed 15 lawsuits against people it said were responsible for flooding its MSN Internet service and users with more than 2 billion unsolicited e-mail messages.
Bureau Report