Also called the Rutman pattern" after Yuri Rutman. The Rutman affair
that gave us the term "joe job" happened in three stages. Ever since
then just about every chickenboner whose antics get bought to the
attention of us (tinu) goes through these stages. The chickenboner
might skip a stage but it always happens in this order.

Stage 1 "Who little old me?". The chickenboner is caught spamming.
First he feigns innocence and acts so surprised. "Me, a spammer?" He
might give excuses such as he bought what he thought was an opt-in
list or that he paid an "Internet marketer" and didn't know he was a
spammer. At this point he begs to get his account restored and may
promise to be a good boy and will never spam again. Now some are
serious and learn their lesion and never move beyond this stage, for
the chickenboner, this is just an application of "rule 1".

Stage 2 "You're playing with the big boys now" Those who have seen
"the Prince of Egypt" may recall the scene where Moses throws down his
staff and it turns into a snake. The two bumbling priests respond by
putting on this huge pyrotechnic "dog and pony show" where they try to
scare Moses into believing that he is now messing with some very
powerful (but nonexistent) Egyptian gods. Well, this is what the
chickenboner tries to do in stage two. Yuri Rutman tried it in this
email to Joe Doll http://www.markwelch.com/yuri_hd.htm.

Here the chickenboner is trying to convince you that you are messing
with a big mover and shaker in the business world and you have better
restore his account (or retract your "slanderous" comments or withdraw
your complain/RBL nomination or whatever) or he will sick his army of
Harvard trained lawyers on you. Ed Cherry tried it, Andrew Brunner
tried it and Scott Turner tried it. (though he limited it to
complaints to *our* ISPs) Now to most of us this kind of empty legal
posturing just gives us a case of deja moo (the feeling that you have
heard that bull before) but it sure is impressive to other
chickenboners who believe that they are really sticking it to the "Net
Nazis".

Stage 3 "I'm gonna git U sucka" At this stage the chickenboner has
lost and he knows it. The only thing left is to exact retribution from
those who the chickenboner believes have wronged him. It is at this
stage that Yuri launched the original "joe job". Sometimes this is
just simply posting trolls to NANAE as Ed Cherry is doing and as
Brunner is now starting to do. Sometimes it is mailbombs and "nuisance
spams" as John McGraff did when Sam had his spamhaus shut down (the
infamous enterprise.net fiasco of a few years ago) and sometimes it is
joe jobs, death threats and crank phone calls.

Terri DeSisto and HipCrime/Bluelister have been stuck at stage 3 for
years.