Invitation to a fling spreads like spam

When law clerk Craig Dale sent an email to a female lawyer suggesting a no-strings-attached fling, he probably imagined his cheeky proposal would, at worst, end up in the bin.

But yesterday he awoke to a nightmare after discovering his proposal had travelled like wildfire through New Zealand's legal profession and had found fame in Australia under the heading "Loser Alert!".

Last week Dale, a law clerk at Russell McVeagh in Auckland, sent an email to Azadeh Bashari, a Mayne Wetherall lawyer detailing his hopes for a casual fling.

"At the end of the day we are both really busy and don't have time for anything else but a bit of good-hearted action ... I thought you were hot and was sure you'd be a rocket in the sack, which I think you would be," he wrote.

It seems Bashari was not taken with his honesty. The next day she forwarded the email to a group of friends under the subject line "LOSER alert". She urged any friends who encountered "this little charmer" to "run run run!!!"

That email did the rounds of Auckland's legal community and was forwarded overseas.

It went through major firms such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Chapman Tripp and KPMG, among others.

"Oh the power of email," Dale groaned to the Herald on Sunday. But he refused to say more.

Neither Dale nor Bashari have been censured by their firms, who appear to have taken a light-hearted view. "It's just been a few giggles," said Michael Jonas, a partner at Mayne Wetherall. Russell McVeagh chief executive Gary McDiarmid refused to comment but Jonas said he understood Dale hadn't been disciplined.

Amid the email frenzy law firm Chapman Tripp is believed to have sent a message to its staff saying similar emails could result in disciplinary action.

Craig Dale and Azadeh Bashari's email is tame compared to some international email scandals.

The most notorious is the "yum, yum" email, written by London PR executive Claire Swire, in late 2000. She wrote to her boyfriend Bradley Chait explaining how much she enjoyed sex with him. An excited Chait forwarded it to his mates, who sent it on. By the end of the day the email had reached America and Japan. In 24 hours millions of people had read it.

Swire was fired and forced to go into hiding and Chait suffered disciplinary action.

In 2002 New Yorker Mary Callahan accidentally hit "reply" instead of "forward" on an email saying her boyfriend John had fallen asleep during intercourse.

The recipient, Murray Tripp, sent it on to his friends and the cycle continued.