Skyrocket Ventures, Inc 32123 Lindero Canyon Rd, Suite 200 Westlake Village, CA 91361
Kevin Burke 294 Barrington Lane Alamo, CA 94507
To whom it may concern: I am writing to inform you that I am planning to file a claim in California small claims court against Skyrocket Ventures, Inc, which has sent me numerous email messages in violation of section 17529 of the California Business and Professions Code.
I am a California resident, who has resided in Alamo, California, and San Francisco, California, continuously during the dates listed below. I have owned the email addresses kev@inburke.com and kburkeorg@gmail.com continuously during this time; a visit to my website https://kev.inburke.com will provide a link to the kev@inburke.com email addresss. Combined, this makes both of my email addresses "California e-mail address" per section 17529.1(b) of the California Business and Professions Code.
Skyrocket Ventures, Inc. ("Skyrocket") is a recruiting company. Skyrocket introduces individuals to firms with job openings, and if an individual gets hired at a firm after an introduction from Skyrocket, the firm pays Skyrocket a fee.
Skyrocket identifies and recruits individuals through phone calls and email messages. From January 21, 2013 to June 10, 2013, Skyrocket sent me six email messages. The full contents of the email messages are attached. The email messages advertise Skyrocket's relationships with companies in the tech industry, and indicate that Skyrocket would help me find a position at these companies. I do not know the individuals sending the mail, nor have I had any prior relationship with them or Skyrocket, so there is no possibility that these emails are purely for my personal benefit; the goal of sending me a message is to try to place me at a company they have contracted with, and thus receive a "finder's fee" for doing so. This implies these messages are an advertisement for Skyrocket's services, and qualify as commercial e-mail advertisements under section 17529.1(c) of the California Business and Professions Code.
I have not received a "clear and conspicuous" request for consent to receive commercial email from Skyrocket, per section 17529.1(d). I have never informed Skyrocket that I would like to receive email messages from them. This means that the six emails Skyrocket sent me qualify as "unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisements" under section 17529.1(o).
Taken together, this means that Skyrocket violated California law by sending unsolicited commercial e-mail to my email address and by extension to me, a California resident, as laid out in section 17529.2(b) of the California Business and Professions Code. Furthermore, given I have never given my email address to anyone at Skyrocket, it is likely that you violated law 17529.4(a)(1) by gathering my email address online for the purpose of sending me commercial mail.
Under section 17529.8(a)(1)(B), I am entitled to recover $1000 per email in violation of the law.
To avoid the faxing back and forth, and printing, and court appearance necessary for small claims court, I am willing to settle for $200 per infringing email, or $1200 in total. A check can be made payable to "Kevin Burke" and sent to the address listed above.
I await your reply.
Sincerely, Kevin Burke
Below are the names of the senders, the subject lines, and the dates of the infringing emails. The full text of each can be found at the link below.
Steve Carlton talented Jan 23, 2013
Steven Kaplan Staying in touch April 11, 2013
Steven Kaplan Catching up:) April 17, 2013
Lisa Bengiovanni Advancement Opportunities May 20, 2013
Rachael Cortina Hey Kevin! :) June 10, 2013
(I asked after this one to be removed from Skyrocket's internal list. However that did not stop you from sending one further email).
Victoria Wood (no subject) Jan 21, 2014
The full contents of each email are available in full at https://gist.github.com/kevinburke/596c4d1acb3a43bf1ec0.
Did this work? They call me about once a month, and I was thinking today that I would call them back and ask to be removed from their list.