How to fight specific spam message pretending to be from my company?

Question

(Okay, not my company, but a buddy works there and they are at a loss on what to do, so same premises of the question)

So over the last few days I received a couple of spam messages, pretending to be from well known company, offering a year of free shopping in their stores. spammers aren't even trying very hard to create cover-up From: addresses (chimelu@bogard.bc13.rayne.okstopandgoraffic.top for example), but the company feels it is hurting their image and want to put a stop to it. I've reported the messages repeatedly through SpamCop, but is there a way to fight the root of the problem?

Note that this is not one of the many questions about how to keep my inbox/spambox clean, it is a question about how to safeguard the company's image.

EDIT 21/09/2016 08:54: What if this company was willing to spend some serious money on court cases and lawyers etc. How would one go about on finding the people responsible for sending the spam? I imagine they are hard to find, but not impossible. Are there companies that specialise in this or something?

Answer 1

There's close to nothing you can do about it.

Sending email is pretty much like sending regular email. What stops you from printing an envelope pretending it's from Apple, put a message inside telling the receiver that if he takes the enclosed flier to any Apple Store, he will be given a free iPhone 7? Nothing, right? Email is just the same.

You can report the message and the IP address, and the spammer will just switch networks and keep spamming. You can send legitimate email messages to all your users, informing them about the spam, and the users will happily ignore the mail, and ask about the free shopping.