The Steve Winter FAQ, version 2.8, by Steve Adams (sadams@enteract.com)

 

[This is version 2.8 of the FAQ. Thanx to those who have contributed information. If you have information for the FAQ, please forward it to Steve Adams sadams@enteract.com]

Mr. Winter's attempts to rebut this FAQ can be found at http://www.prime.org/spss.htm. It must be noted that Mr. Winter is using a very old version (1.7 - from Nov 1996) of the FAQ, and falsely attributing it to a corporation.

This FAQ is Copyright 1996, 1997 and 1998 by Steve Adams. All rights reserved. Reproduction is permitted, so long as the author and publisher are correctly identified and the FAQ is reproduced in its entirety. Links to this page are welcome.

All correspondence relating to this FAQ or Steve Winter should go to Steve Adams.

WHAT'S NEW?

6/12/98

Added link to a web page by Peter Wm. Sachs, Esq, dealing with legal issues and claims by Steve Winter.  Added a link to DejaNews of an article where Steve Winter admits that his claim that SPSS is responsible for the FAQ that I posted under my own id.

5/3/98

Added information about Steve Winter's ordination.  Reliable sources also have indicated that the move of Mr. Winter's business web page was related to an IRS investigation.

Added notes from "pavanas" on how to protect yourself from harassment by Steve Winter.

4/30/98

Mr. Winter has, for the past several months, been in a lengthy scrap with Jerry Moon and Mark Bassett.  Both men were, at some time in the past, associated or affiliated with Steve Winter.  At one point, Mr. Moon was a co-moderator of Steve Winter's bulletin board.  He has attempted, on several occasions, to have their accounts cancelled, mostly because they are revealing interesting tidbits about Mr. Winter's past, things he does not want anyone to know.

Mr. Winter has started a new page on his site, which he calls "Impsmail" or the "Reprobates' Corner".  Here he has compiled public internet postings, email and IRC sessions.  These items are HEAVILY edited to ensure that anything damaging to Mr. Winter is excised.

Mr. Winter has removed the articles from Marvin Arnold from his page, claiming that Marvin Arnold has left the "Apostolic Faith," but numerous posts to UseNet seem to indicate that Mr. Arnold made some kind of falling out between Mr. Winter and Mr. Arnold, apparently over Mr. Winter's behavior on UseNet.

Mr. Winter has moved his "sellcom" business to it's own domain.  You can find it now at www.sellcom.com, which is hosted by Earthlink.  His old address, www.prime.org/sellcom/index.htm will automatically transfer you to the new address.  The address of the registration is in Durham, NC, home of Steve Winter, on the same street.  See the whois database for details. 

Earlier this year, Mr. Winter's lawyer sent threats of lawsuits to various companies and people, but was largely ignored.  One person submitted the document to his attorney and insurance company who promptly notified Mr. Winter's lawyer that the charges were fraudulent and for the purpose of extortion, and that such fraud and extortion would be reported to the authorities.  Nothing else has happened.

With regards to his other threatened lawsuits, no further action appears to have been taken.  He has filed some sort of criminal complaint against Mark Bassett.  He claims that the "charges" were filed with the Durham Police Dept, with the number IR-98-11737.  Mr. Winter calls this a "case" and also "criminal charges" and says that the Durham Police have forwarded it to the FBI for investigation.  It should be noted that all that happened was that Mr. Winter filed a police complaint, which anyone can do.  Complaints only become charges when an officer of the court makes them so - i.e. an indictment is handed up, or charges are pressed by local prosecutors, etc.

Mr. Winter has continued to try to silence his critics, but due to this FAQ, he has been quite unsuccessful in his endeavors.

6/24/97

Mr. Winter has sent a letter to Senator Helms (R-North Carolina) about pornography published by IBM.NET. In the past, this treatment has been reserved for ISP's that have TOS'd Mr. Winter, so it is likely that IBM did terminate Mr. Winter's access for violation of their Terms Of Service.

6/6/97

Mr. Winter's ISP, Chudys, now has an NNTP server, and Mr. Winter's is posting through it, with his usual prime.org addresses. He is also still posting with his ibm.net address. His posting volume has returned to previous levels, now that he is not posting through ibm.net. He has also added new material to the GTE.Net area on his web page in response to GTE publicly stating that his account was cancelled for net abuse.

5/27/97

Rewriting of certain sections for clarity. Updated information on Mr. Winter's complaints to Senator Helms. Included note about public comments by GTE Net about canceling Mr. Winter. Noted the reduction in postings from Mr. Winter. Updated information on the aus.* retromoderation. Formatting changes have been made.

4/25/97

Steve Winter has now filed a formal complaint about GTE with the North Carolina Attorney General's office. You can find it on his GTE page.

4/22/97

Steve Winter has lost his GTE account (stevwint@gte.net) because of net abuse. As is his usual practice, he has filed complaints about child pornography on their site, by sending a letter to Sen. Jesse Helms and various other "law enforcement" agencies.

He has modified his web page in several places to reflect his accusations against GTE. He has not, as yet, threatened any legal action against GTE.

He is now posting through ibm.net again, though with the prime.org email addresses.

The purpose of this FAQ is to provide corroboration for persons on the net harassed by Steve Winter. It is designed to be sent by such persons to Sys Admins and ISP's to prevent Steve Winter from having their accounts revoked or their employment endangered.

It should be noted that Mr. Winter will claim that all of the information here is meant only for the purpose of masking my opposition to his religious views. Nothing could be further from the truth. In this case, and for this purpose, I don't *care* what doctrinal views Mr. Winter holds.

Mr. Winter continues to claim that this FAQ is false and full of lies. I (and others) have repeatedly asked him to identify the mistakes, errors or other problems with the FAQ. He has refused to do so. On my own, I have discovered new information and made changes to the FAQ in light of this information. Numbers in () refer to footnotes at the bottom of the text.

Mr. Winter also claims on his web page that the FAQ is from spss.com.  This is false, and Mr. Winter knows that it is false.  He even admitted this in a News Posting. It's clear that he is still thinking that he can extort money from them, but with the admission here, he has no case.

100 Who is Steve Winter
101 What is PRIME?
102 What is "Jesus Name Apostolic Holiness Church?
103 What is Mr. Winter's modus operandi?
104 Lawsuits and legal complaints by Mr. Winter
105 What kinds of tricks does Mr. Winter Pull?
106 Where has Mr. Winter been banned?
107 Why has Mr. Winter been banned?
108 What else does Mr. Winter do that causes him problems on the net?
109 What should you do?
110 Is Steve Winter a SPAMMER?
111 What is Cancel Watch?
112 Who is Steve Adams?
113 How to Protect Youself from Harassment by Steve Winter (by "pavanas")

100. Who is Steve Winter?

Steve Winter is a defrocked pastor (apparantly by the same man who ordained him - Marvin Arnold) and the operator of a system known as "PRIME.ORG". He lives in Durham, NC, and is also a re-seller of computer equipment1. At one point, he had begun to re-sell internet services (presumably from PSI), though that ISP TOS'd him (see below).  He continues to list internet access on his web page, so he is likely reselling from or through his current provider.   Mr. Winter claims to be a Reverend representing "Jesus Name Apostolic Holiness Church, Inc." He operates a Web page ( http://www.prime.org ) which describes his particular doctrinal distinctive. He claims the page is a ministry of the aforementioned church.

Mr. Winter's known current email id's are:

[Note: anything from prime.org is most likely Mr. Winter]

Previous known email accounts (used since October 95, but not recently):

Be warned that if you send him even a single email, it is likely that he will complain to your provider or employer that you are harassing him. See below for details.

101. What is PRIME?

PRIME stands for PreRapture(tm) International Message Exchange. It is Mr. Winter's personal network of BBS's. They carry various forums for his sect. You can access a list of the forums by downloading the file "prime.zip" from his WWW. He also provides information on home schooling, and his legal dealings with his ISP's.

Mr. Winter's web page used to contain articles from Reverend Marvin Arnold, the man who ordained him.  It also appears that Mr. Winter was defrocked, though it is not clear if this was by Marvin Arnold or not.  The articles were removed after some kind of falling out between them.

102. What is "Jesus Name Apostolic Holiness Church, Inc."?

This organization does not appear to be anything other than the corporate charter for a religious organization. This is fairly standard practice amongst churches, but that corporation then may not engage in certain businesses, or if it does, must properly delineate its for-profit and non-profit business.

Mr. Winter used to use the same server for both his religious and business operations, though his business is now hosted by Earthlink.  The old address http://www.prime.org/sellcom/index will link you to www.sellcom.com, and you can get details about his business.  This move was apparently precipitated by an IRS investigation of his ministry and his business.

103. What is Mr. Winter's "modus operandi"?

Steve Winter posts lengthy duplicate messages stating his positions, often simply reposting verbatim his scriptural citations with no supporting exegesis. These messages are usually massively cross-posted, without regard to whether or not the message is on topic for the group. A careful examination of these posts will see that many are simply "cut and paste" work from files on his website.

With the cancellation of his GTE.NET account, Mr. Winter's posting volume had decreased dramatically. Now that his ISP (Chudys) has NetNews access, the volume has returned to previous levels. Through it all, he has not changed his style or methods, and continues to issue threats against ISP's and individuals.

In the past, Mr. Winter has harassed numerous groups, including soc.religion.quaker, uk.religion.* and christnet.*, so badly that the Christnet groups and the uk.religion.* groups went moderated, aus.religion.christian is now retro-moderated (against cross-posting outside of the aus groups), the Quakers considered but rejected moderation, and the promisekeepers group has recently been created as a moderated group in the soc.religion heirarchy.

If anyone questions Mr Winter or his theolgy, he responds by:

  1. Calling the person a "Lying, dirt, false Christian scum," or some variation thereof.

  2. Posting a slightly modified version of his "Acts 2:38" posting, or one of his other "canned" responses. He modifies them just enough to avoid the SPAM detectors. He seems to have about 10 to 12 different ones.   See item 109 below.

  3. If the person sends him email to try and debate the issue, he sends a "do not ever email me again" message. Similarly, any attempt to discuss his abuse of newsgroups is treated similarly. He claims to save such email in an "evidence file" for later prosecution. In several cases, he sent a harassment complaint based on a single email. On occasion, he skips this step and goes to step 4.

  4. He emails and or calls the service provider or employer of the person who disagrees with him to have their account pulled or service cut off. He attempted this with me both by calling my company and by calling my service provider. In both cases, he was more or less laughed at. My ISP did not require me to take any action at all. Several correspondents have reported similar action by Mr Winter, including emails and calls to employers. In most cases, fortunately, no action was taken. In others, employees have been asked to remove signature lines that reflected on the company, etc. Mr Winter seems to prefer silencing his opposition to actually trying to win debates.

  5. If he does not get satisfaction, he either makes harassing phone calls (several people have reported this, and I have experienced it personally) or begins posting hate-filled falsehoods to newsgroups about the person.

  6. If he is unsuccessful in the above, in at least one case he has resorted to an attempt to extort $50,000 from the employer of one of his opponants. He has also resorted to posting false and defamatory statements about the employer on investement and other groups.

  7. He has claimed to have filed numerous police reports and made complaints to the FBI in an attempt to silence those who disagree with his methods and/or theology. It does not appear that any action has been taken by any law enforcement agency on his behalf. Mr Winter has been repeatedly asked for case numbers or the names of the law enforcement professionals involved, but has never given any evidence at all that his claims are true.

    In addition, Mr. Winter has claimed to have written several letters to Senator Jesse Helms. Recently, he has claimed that he received a phone call from Senator Helms office saying that they were looking into his child pornography allegations. A copy of the FAQ has been sent to Senator Helms. This appears to be his current choice of tactics, since he was quite unsuccessful in his recent lawsuit against Concentric.
  8. In numerous cases, Mr Winter eihter filed lawsuits or threatened ISP's with lawsuits. See section 104 for details of actual and threatened lawsuits.

  9. Harassment of regional Newsadmins. Several Regional News administrators who enforce the charters of their regional NON-USNET groups report getting email and phone calls from irate users who claim that they received email from 'cancel.watch@prime.org', claiming that their article was censored from the net. This is sent not only to the user, but also to any identifiable news host that might have carried the original cancel. See item 110 below.

    Mr. Winter is, in this case, clearly trying to drum up support against News Admins who are doing their job. I have seen several of his email complaints, and copies of this FAQ have been forwarded to several ISPs and system administrators. See http://www.prime.org/cwatch.htm for Mr Winter's version of events.

104. Lawsuits, threats and legal complaints by Mr. Winter

For a good analysis of the legal claims and issues raised by Steve Winter, check www.stevewinter.com, a web page created by Peter Wm. Sachs, Esq.

Steve Winter has filed several lawsuits, and made at least one formal complaint against various ISP's. These include Concentric (settled), Netcom (settled) and Nando (dismissed). He intends to file against PSI, GTE, SPSS and Steve Adams (that's me!) according to his web page.

Here is the status of each of these suits, as best as can be determined:

Nando

Mr. Winter dropped this case (dismissed without prejudice) apparantly based on an agreement with someone at Nando Net. At some point following this, Nando once again suspended his access and he states that he is going to refile the case. See http://www.prime.org/legal/nando1 for details. It should be noted that Nando is no longer an independant ISP.

Netcom

This case was settled out of court. I have it on fairly good authority that Mr. Winter received payment from Netcom to drop the suit. I do not have confirmation of the amount, but I have been told it was at least $10,000.

Concentric

Concentric used several legal maneuvers to fight Mr. Winter, including having the case removed to Federal Court and filing a counter-suit. Mr. Winter claims the case was settled out of court.

Recently, Mr Winter has changed his web page to remove any reference to the Concentric lawsuit (it used to say that an out of court settlement was pending.) He has also added the following text to this page:

There have been no rulings or judgments against Steve Winter or prime.org in ANY of the legal actions undertaken by Steve Winter or prime.org in these matters.

Based ont his comment, it would appear that Concentric was quite successful in defending the lawsuit, and that Mr Winter agreed to some kind of penalty (perhaps dismissing his complaint with prejudice - ie he can't refile it) and that he wants to hide that fact by making the statement (true, of course) that the *court* didn't rule against him or impose any penalties. I suspect his desire to reach an out-of-court settlement was driven by a fear that sanctions from the court would prove that he is a net abuser

During this case, he was admonished by the Court for submitting blatant obscenity in his filings, and was told not to repeat it on threat of sanctions. I am in the process of getting transcripts of the case from the Cleark of the Circuit Court.

PSI

Mr Winter is once again threatening a lawsuit against PSI. He first did this in late 1996, but removed most of the information when PSI threatened to shut down his site completely, instead of just blocking his NNTP (news) access.

He did post an article on Januaray 18th stating that he is consulting a lawyer about his case against PSI, as opposed to proceding pro se as he has in the past. In addition, since moving to a new provider, he has restored his threats of a lawsuit to his website. See http://www.prime.org/legalpsi for details.

GTE

Mr Winter sent a letter to Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Attorney General's office and "various law enforcement agencies" regarding GTE's "publication" of certain UseNet newsgroups. See http://www.prime.org/legal/gte for details.

Recently, an employee of GTE.NET stated publically on UseNet that Mr. Winter's account was cancelled for violation of their TOS.

IBM

Mr Winter sent a letter to Senator Jesse Helms regarding GTE's "publication" of certain UseNet newsgroups. See http://www.prime.org/legal/ibmnet for details.

AT&T

Mr Winter has filed a formal complaint with the North Carolina Attorney General's office about AT&T cancelling his account. See http://www.prime.org/legal/atm for details.

SPSS

Mr. Winter sent a letter he was pleased to call "An out of court settlement offer" to SPSS. Having read the letter, it is nothing more than an attempt to extort $50,000 from SPSS. I say this because the thrust of the letter is to say "Pay me $50K or I'll sue you." That sure sounds like extortion to me.

His reasoning for trying to extort this money was to silence me - since a few early versions of the FAQ were posted from SPSS. It needs to be made clear that the FAQ is my work, it was never sanctioned by SPSS and they would never have given their approval if I had asked. I didn't ask.  Mr. Winter has even admitted this in a post to usenet. Click here to see it.

To date, as far as I can tell, no action has been taken on this lawsuit.

Steve Adams

Mr. Winter has also stated that he is going to sue me for publishing the FAQ. No action has been taken on this to date.

Mark Bassett

Mr. Winter has actually filed a complaint with the Durham Police Department about alleged harassment by Mark Bassett.  The report is IR-98-11737.  Note that this appears to be nothing more than a basic complaint which can be made by any person.   It is most specifically NOT a case and NOT criminal charges as Mr. Winter has said in UseNet posts.  To date, no action has been taken by any officer of any court to actually charge Mr. Bassett.

It appears that the dispute between Mark Bassett and Steve Winter stems from a previous time when they were engaged in some kind of cooperation.  The same has happened with Jerry Moon, though at this point, no complaints have been filed against Mr. Moon.

MPCS; FDMA; Spinne, Inc (and others)

Mr. Winter is once again threateneing FDMA with a lawsuit for "conspiring with the ISP's" to deny him Internet service. See his "Cancel Watch" pages at http://www.prime.org/cwatch.htm for details. He is also threatening any other providers that he calls "accessories with mpcs.com" with legal action.

 

Besides these lawsuits and threats of lawsuits, Mr.Winter has also filed a legal complaint against AT&T with the North Carolina Attorney General's office. Nothing has come of this as yet.

Mr. Winter has also filed several complaints with Senator Jesse Helms office, stating that he received a letter and a telephone call from Senator Helms office. It appears that initially he received a form letter saying that his complaints about pornography were being forwarded to the Justice Department. Recently, as noted above, he claims to have had a telephone call from Senator Helms' office.

105. What kinds of tricks does Mr Winter pull?

When Mr Winter is kicked out of a group (eg alt.org.promisekeepers), he tries to use that as a way of harassing people. For example, when the aforementioned group set up an anti-crosspost bot, he posted to other groups, but set the followups to include a.o.p. This would cause replies to his posts to be autocancelled.

Mr Winter also would post to 10 or 15 "Big 8" and regional groups, but set followups for one "alt" group which did not have good propagation. If the reply was restricted to 1 or 2 "on-topic" groups, he would put back all of the off-topic groups and again restrict followups. In recent times, he has begun to honor follow-ups in the aus.* groups, and occasionally in his usual cross-post lists, though he (understandably) often removes alt.fan.steve-winter from his posts.

Late last fall, Mr Winter began issuing cancel messages for "NoCeM" posts in alt.nocem.misc. The purpose of the "NoCeM" posts is to allow those who do not wish to see any of Mr Winter's posts to have them automatically ignored by their newsreader. His cancels were the proximate cause, along with his SPAM of the fl.* newsgroups for PSI blocking his NNTP access. He has solicited an attorney in misc.legal to represent him in a lawsuit against those sites and users who post the "NoCeM" articles.2 Mr Winter's claim that NoCeM posts are censorship are patently false, in that nothing is cancelled, and they are used only by those who want to use them. They do not remove his articles nor interfere with his articles movement from one system to another. Since Mr. Winter's current UseNet access does not allow him to issue cancels, he has ceased doing so. It remains to be seen what will happen if he regains full NNTP UseNet access.

106. Where has Mr Winter been banned?

Mr Winter has, at one time or another, been removed/banned/cancelled or had submissions rejected by the following groups/networks/ISP's:

Note also that he may have or may in the future obtain new accounts from these providers/networks. This list is only meant to show a history of his accounts, not give a list of where he does or does not have access at any given moment.

107. Why has Mr Winter been banned?

He was TOSed (TOS=Terms of Serice - ie kicked off for violating the rules of the provider) from Netcom, Concentric Networks, PSI and GTE Networks, and the same appears to be true for AT&T Worldnet and Nando. The newsgroups banned him either for excessive cross-posting or failure to abide by the Charter, or both. In the case of the Bible Study group, he refused to refrain from making personal attacks on other members of the group. His theology was never an issue, and anyone who examines the content of the Bible Study (see www.dejanews.com for soc.religion.christian.bible-study) group will see that opinions from every side of an issue are permitted, so long as the Charter is followed. There have been several lengthy debates on Oneness and Acts 2:38 in the group, with a couple of Mr. Winter's BBS moderators taking part.. Mr Winter claims that Charters have no force and he is not bound by them. If he would agree to abide by the Charter, his posts whould be welcomed.

108. What else does Mr Winter do that causes him problems on the net?

Mr Winter runs a business that supplies computer-related hardware. He posts advertising for his business in places which do not generally accept advertising or where the advertising is off-topic. He has had numerous articles cancelled for this over the past several years. In addition, he posts material to regional groups which do not want it, and have charters which state that the material he is posting is not wanted. Most of this has to do with his business.

109. What should you do?

If Mr. Winter is violating general nettiquette, contact the adminstrator of the site he is posting from (generally "news@site" or "postmaster@site"). Respond to him in the newsgroup as necessary, but do not try to contact him directly, nor send him anything via email or regular mail. In other words, work with the system and do not harass him. If it is email from prime.org, then email darkshot@chudys.com or abuse@worldnet.att.net. If it is a UseNet post, email darkshot@chudys.com.

110. Is Steve Winter a SPAMMER

The answer to this question seems to be "Yes". He has deftly avoided the automatic SPAM detectors by altering the order of his quotes, etc. A simple examination of his responses to any deviation from his view of theology show that it is the same canned material, slightly altered. I have read nearly every article Mr Winter has posted to UseNet, and it can be verified by looking at DejaNews and comparing the various postings.

111. What is "Cancel Watch"?

In an attempt to gain support for his refusal to abide by charters, regional group rules, etc, Mr Winter has created something he is pleased to call "Cancel Watch", and has posted a FAQ on this to various groups. Mr Winter claims that Cancel Watch is protecting people from being cancelled by notifying them of a cancel issued against their post. His goal seems to be to eliminate controls on cross-posting and regional newsgroups. See http://www.prime.org/cwatch.htm for a copy of the FAQ. The most important thing to note about this is that he doesn't notify users when HE cancels articles!

112. Who is Steve Adams?

Steve Adams is the moderator of a soc.religion.christian.bible-study, and is a long time participant in UseNet (since 1985).

113.How to Protect Yourself From Harassment by Steve Winter

{{ The information here was compiled by "pavanas" and is reproduced here with his permission.  Please direct any comments to him. }}

If you are threatened or harassed by Steve Winter by telephone or snail mail (USPS):

(This is mainly applicable to residents of the United States although he has been known to to pester people in Canada.)

1)    If you feel you are being harassed by him, and you live in another state, you can contact your local FBI office,          ask to speak with an Internet aware agent.
   
2)    If you feel you are being harassed by him, you can contact your local District Attorney.

3)    If he uses the telephone, you can contact your phone company.

4)    If he uses the US Mail ou can contact your local Postmaster (USPS).

5)    If you feel that you have been harassed or threatened under the aegis of his church you can contact the IRS          and ask to speak with an Internet aware agent.

What to do if you receive a "Lawsuit" in the mail (USPS) from Steve Winter.

1)    You can ignore it. To actually file a lawsuit he would need to go to the court of record for your domicile and          convince the officers of the court, that there is merit to such a suit.

2)    You can take it to your local postmaster (USPS), if you find it offensive and consider it harrassment.

3)    You can always contact your attorney.

Footnotes

1. Verified in "ProPhone 1996" from Selectphone, and backed up by "whois" information from the NIC. The ProPhone database lists his name, address & phone number, and the SIC code (5734B - Computer Parts sales) for his business. The listing is for "Steve and Nancy Winter" - his wife's name can be verified by looking at his PRIME signup kit and seeing her name listed as a moderator. I do NOT give his address or phone number because I'm not interested in invading his privacy or helping anyone else to do so.

2. Reported via email and netnews postings by several persons.

3. Reported via email and netnews postings by several persons. It has been reported that he is once again on FIDO net. Apparantly he has twice been kicked off, but by threatening lawsuits forced his way back in.

4. Reported by Netcom administrators in UseNet posts. Verified by his lawsuit against Netcom, as posted on his own web page.

5. Verified by his lawsuit against Concentric, as posted on his own web page.

6. Verified by his 'Formal Complaint Against ATT', as posted on his own web page.

7. Verified by his 'The Nando Lawsuit', as posted on his own web page.

8. Verfied by his lawsuit threat and postings on his CancelWatch page.

9. Reported via email and netnews postings by several persons.

10. Verified by his letters to Sen. Jesse Helms and the NC Attorney General's office, as displayed on his web page, and by postings to UseNet from a member of GTE.NET's staff.

11. Verified by his letter to Sen. Jesse Helms, as displayed on his web page.

Updated 6/7/97

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