I happened upon this indictment on cybercrime.gov about a series of email incidents from 11/01 through 12/02. I don’t remember this happening, so it was interesting reading the indictment.

Basically, Allan Eric Carlson is accused of sending targeted spam about the Philadelphia Phillies to "thousands" of people. As part of his campaign, he would routinely send thousands of copies of messages to Philadelphia sports writers and the Phillies management team. He usually (always?) sent these emails from other compromised machines (sounds like a botnet) and sometimes spoofed the emails as having come from those same Philly sportswriters.

A fascinating use of spam and virus techniques in a targeted attack.