The Official Steve Winter FAQ by Steve Adams

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Version 3.27

This is version 3.3 of the Steve Winter FAQ. If you have information for the FAQ, please forward it to

This FAQ is © 1996-2007 by Stephen M. 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 and encouraged.

Steve Winter has tried to silence me, along with many others, through lawsuits and other intimidation. Federal Judge N. C. Tilley dismissed all of his claims against me (and numerous other defendants) on August 22, 2003. Mr. Winter has appealed the dismissal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, VA. The dismissal was upheld by the Court of Appeals, and Mr. Winter failed to apply for an en banc hearing. He declined to appeal to the US Supreme Court.

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

WHAT'S NEW?

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.

This document, along with the scanned court filings, can be sent to an attorney, should Mr. Winter name you in a civil complaint. If this does happen to you, please contact me for a complete set of case files, which can be provided in PDF format.

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. If Mr. Winter would stop harassing those who disagree with him, this FAQ would be unecessary.

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 has claimed 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. Based on his admission in that post, his case against SPSS became impossible to prosecute, and he seems to have realized this, in that they are not a named defendant in his big lawsuit.

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 Stephen Adams?
113 How to Protect Yourself from Harassment by Steve Winter (by "pavanas")

100. Who is Steve Winter?

Steve Winter is a defrocked pastor (apparently 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 no longer lists internet access on his web page.

Mr. Winter claims to be a Pastor 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 has not answered repeated questions about his ministry. Most importantly, he refuses to say who ordained him, and when. There is some evidence that he may have received some kind of credentials from one Marvin Arnold at one time, but these credentials, if they ever existed, went away when Mr. Winter broke with Mr. Arnold.

Mr. Winter has also been asked if he is licensed to perform marriages in North Carolina. This would be a good indication of the status of his "church." It would appear from his refusal to answer, that the answer to this question is that he is not so licensed.

A good history of Mr. Winter is available at http://www.altupc.com/swinter.htm

Mr. Winter's current email id's are believed to be:

[Note: anything from prime.org is almost certainly from Mr. Winter]

Previous known email accounts used since October 95, but not recently (listed so you can search for his postings on Google):

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.

Note: With regards to AOL, Mr. Winter claims that " They kept trying to get me to take more time free." I am sure they did - everyone receives these in the mail. In other words, he got a CD or diskette in the mail via one of AOL's mass-mailings. Hardly proof that they wanted him back.

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 site. He also provides information on home schooling, and his legal dealings with his ISP's.

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 for churches, but generally that religion corporation then may not engage in certain businesses, or if it does, must properly delineate its for-profit and non-profit business.

A check fo the North Carolina Secretary of State's records no longer shows the corporate registration (03/08/03). Mr. Winter may have dissolved the corporation, allowed it to lapse, or re-registered it in a different state.

Mr. Winter used to use the same server for both his religious and business operations, though his business is now hosted by Interland. This move was apparently precipitated by an IRS investigation of his ministry and his business, after complaints were made to the IRS about his status as a church, and hosting for-profit websites.

Note: It is not known if Mr. Winter has 501(c)3 status, which would confer certain tax advantages of a church. Evidence suggests that he does not. On his web page, he asks people to give to other churches and not to his. He claims this is because he "wants more" (see his financial help webpage for his complete statement). It is suspected that this is actually because he cannot accept tex-deductable contributions. Questions on this regard have gone unanswered.

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. Once he gained news access again, the volume 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 voted for moderated status, aus.religion.christian is now retro-moderated (against cross-posting outside of the aus groups), the Quakers discussed but rejected moderation, and a promisekeepers group has recently been created as a moderated group in the soc.religion hierarchy.

If anyone questions Mr Winter or his theology, 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. His most common targets currently are Jerry Moon, Mark Bassett and Raymond Knapp.

  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 opponents. He has also resorted to posting false and defamatory statements about the employer on investment and other groups. He tried to extort money from one of my previous employers as well.

  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. The only thing he has provided are police incident numbers, but these do not show anything more than the fact that he convinced a police officer to take a complaint. To the best of my knowledge, nothing more has come of any of the complaints (beyond wasting time and paper, that is).

    In addition, Mr. Winter has claimed to have written several letters to former Senator Jesse Helms. 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 was sent to Senator Helms. Nothing seems to have come of any of these letters. Once the FAQ was sent, Mr. Winter no longer mentioned contacting Sentor Helms' office, so we can safely assume that they put him in their "crank" file.

  8. In numerous cases, Mr Winter either 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-BIG8 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

UPDATE: A lawsuit has been filed!

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 has claimed in the past that he intends to file against PSI, GTE, SPSS and Steve Adams (that's me!). Note: he made good on some of these threats in 2002.

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

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 follow-ups to include a.o.p. This would cause replies to his posts to be auto-canceled.

Mr. Winter also would post to 10 or 15 "Big 8" and regional groups, but set follow-ups 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 follow-ups. 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.

Several years ago, Mr Winter began issuing cancel messages for "NoCeM" posts in alt.nocem.misc. The purpose of the "NoCeM" posts was to allow those who did 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 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 canceled, 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 (most sites don't, these days), he has ceased doing so.

106. Where has Mr Winter been banned?

Mr Winter has, at one time or another, been removed/banned/canceled 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 TOS'ed 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 in his being banned (though he clearly did not like being challenged on it), and anyone who examines the content of the Bible Study (see www.google.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 would be welcomed.

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

Mr. Winter runs a business that supplies consumer electronics and computer-related hardware. He has, in the past, posted advertising for his business in places which do not generally accept advertising or where the advertising is off-topic. He has had numerous articles canceled 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 permitted in the group. Most of this has to do with his business, but at times it is religious in nature.

109. What should you do?

If Mr. Winter is violating general nettiquette, contact the administrator 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.

Prime.org and Impsmail.org appear to be hosted by Interland. (www.interland.net). If you are referring to anything from those two sites, and you believe that it is an abuse or violation of Terms of Service issue, contact abuse@interland.com for assistance.

110. Is Steve Winter a SPAMMER

Updated 08/03/03

In the past, I would have said that the answer to this question appeared to be "Yes". He 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 was nearly always the same canned material, slightly altered.

At this point, though, his repeat postings seem to be limited to canned attacks on Raymond Knapp, Mark Bassett and a few others. These do not, in my opinion, qualify as SPAM.

111. What was "Cancel Watch"?

In an attempt to gain support for his refusal to abide by charters, regional group rules, etc, Mr Winter created something he was pleased to call "Cancel Watch", and has posted a FAQ on this to various groups. Mr. Winter claimed that Cancel Watch was protecting people from being canceled 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!

Not too long after he started doing this, he stated that he had stopped issuing cancels. I suspect that he discovered that what he was doing was a quick way to lose accounts!

112. Who is Stephen M. Adams?

Stephen M. 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):

  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 you 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.

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

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

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. Apparently 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 AT&T', as posted on his own web page.

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

8. Verified 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 former 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 former Sen. Jesse Helms, as displayed on his web page.

Updated 08/05/05

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