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A jury last week awarded Omega World Travel, its Web site Cruise.com and company founder Gloria Bohan, a whopping $2.5 million in damages in their defamation suit against anti-spam activist Mark Mumma.

The jury awarded the plaintiffs $500,000 in compensatory damages and $2 million in punitive damages, according to John Lawless, Omega’s staff lawyer.

Mumma is reportedly broke and Omega will not likely see even a fraction of the money.  However, the decision is a major victory for a company that was unfairly labeled a spammer in the national press.

Lawless said Mumma has 10 business days from the day the award was decided—April 26—to file any motions.

Lawless predicted Mumma will file a motion for a reduction in damages, a motion for a new trial, and one to set aside the verdict.

“We’ll wait until those come before we decide what we’re going to do as far as the judgment is concerned,” said Lawless. “Our decision will be guided by protecting our name. That’s what this whole thing was about from the very beginning.”

Mumma did not immediately respond to an e-mail asking him what he intends to do next.  

The decision is the latest twist in a two-year-plus battle that began when Mumma received half a dozen marketing e-mails from Omega’s Web site Cruise.com, which Mumma claimed were unsolicited.

Mumma threatened in a letter to sue Cruise.com’s parent, Omega, unless the company paid him $6,250.

When Omega refused, postings on one of Mumma’s anti-spam Web sites accused Omega, its Web site Cruise.com and its owners Daniel and Gloria Bohan of being spammers. The Web site also posted photos of the Bohans that had apparently been copied from Cruise.com and described the couple as “Cruise.com spammers,” according to court records.

The Bohans turned around and sued Mumma in federal court for $3.8 million in damages, alleging defamation. Daniel Bohan’s name was subsequently removed from the complaint.

In response, Mumma countersued the Bohans under Oklahoma and federal anti-spam laws.

As the battle between the Omega and Mumma took place, Mumma received sympathetic national press coverage—most notably in an article in Time Magazine entitled “A Spammer’s Revenge”—from various outlets painting him as simply a man who became fed up with spam and decided to do something about it.

However, in an interview with this newsletter in February, Mumma admitted that he knew his address had been registered with Cruise.com by someone, which meant even he knew that Cruise.com’s executives thought they were responding to a legitimate request for information.

Throughout the trial, Mumma maintained that that since he didn’t request the information, Omega spammed him, according to Lawless. “The jury rejected that,” said Lawless.

Before Omega suit went to trial, Lawless said the Omega was willing to settle if Mumma would post an apology online for allegedly calling Omega the Bohans, spammers; remove any references to them, and agree to never post anything about them again.

Lawless said, however, that Mumma demanded a “significant amount of money” to settle.

The award against Mumma is another in a string of losses for the Oklahoma-based activist.

An Oklahoma appeals court last month upheld a lower court’s ruling to throw out Mumma’s lawsuit against El Chico Mexican Café for three e-mails the restaurant allegedly sent him.

Last November, The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a district court ruling in favor of Omega in Mumma’s lawsuit against the travel marketeter.

Though Mumma claimed Omega’s e-mail headers contained law-breaking inaccuracies, the court said the inaccuracies did not make Omega’s headers “materially false or materially misleading.”

Mumma’s legal expenses have reportedly left him tens of thousands of dollars in debt.