AOL To Dig For Spammer's Gold

Give AOL credit for persistence. The company has a court order giving it permission to dig up the yard of a Massachusetts couple, the parents of a convicted spammer who owes AOL millions of dollars. The company thinks Davis Wolfgang Hawke, 27, buried bars of gold and platinum around his folks' home.

Hawke's mother, Peggy Greenbaum, told The Associated Press that she doesn't believe there's anything valuable in the yard. "I don't care if they dig up the entire yard," she says. "They're just going to make fools of themselves. We certainly wouldn't allow him to put any gold on our property." She's planning to go to court and get an order to block the excavation.

The gold and platinum bars are believed to be buried in a two-acre yard in Medfield. Hawke, who has used different names in the past, lost a court case to AOL, which won a $12.8 million judgment. Authorities say they can't find him, and he recently missed a court date.

AOL last year showed a federal judge receipts traced to Hawke for more than $350,000 in purchases of gold and platinum, and now the company wants to dig up his parents' lawn. Metal or no metal, that might give him an incentive to resurface.