AOL's suit alleges Connor Miller Software Inc. of suburban Winter Garden, FL; Charles Henry Miller Jr. and his wife, Heidi Miller, also both of Winter Garden; and James Connor of Longwood, FL conspired with Jonathan Beyer and Joseph Conrad of Thailand to transmit at least 35 million e-mails pitching low-rate mortgages.

The suit alleges the Millers and Connor were paid $4,000 a month to maintain computer equipment that was used by Beyer and Conrad to send text files to the Winter Garden company's offices from where the junk e-mail was routed to AOL mail servers in Virginia. By using this strategy, the suit alleges the defendants bypassed AOL spam filters and the e-mails were distributed to millions of AOL subscribers.

Lawyers for the Millers and Connor answered the suit by arguing their clients were computer network technicians, not spammers.

The lawyers also noted in their filed response that US District Court Judge Claude Hilton in Virginia had dismissed a similar AOL suit against the defendants last year when AOL couldn't prove Virginia had jurisdiction over Florida residents, just because AOL is based in Dulles, VA. AOL's Virginia suit against Beyer and Conrad, both Americans living in Thailand, is still awaiting a judge's ruling.