Why Does Spamming Continue to Work?

Story this week about a brother and sister team of spammers that was convicted of fraud.
http://www.itnews.com.au/storycontent.asp?ID=3&Art_ID=22356
article.....

According to Kilgore, Jaynes and DeGroot used spam to advertise a variety of products and services, including penny stocks, low mortgage rates, and work at home schemes.

Prosecutors in the case alleged that Jaynes sent or tried to send 7.7 million messages to AOL subscribers in just one day, and reportedly raked in as much as US$400,000 a month in orders for just one of their products.

During the trial, Jaynes was said to have accumulated a fortune of some US$24 million by selling via spam.

snip.....

Which answers the question of why they do it. $24 million! $400,000 in one month! Those figures maybe inflated as they often are in criminal cases. But even accounting for that, it means big money.

Now the real question.
Why does anyone buy this stuff?
Would you buy something from an unsolicted e-mail?
I've never known anyone who has - or least been willling to admit it.
Are there that many men in need of genital enhancement?

Okay these guys were selling get rich schemes but hey, does the actual product even matter? How many Rolex watch ads have you been getting lately? They even admit they're fakes but judging by the sheer number of offers I'm getting every day they must be getting buys. Wouldn't going to a flea market be a better deal? They have lots of fakes there from sunglasses to tshirts to watches and at least you can see them and bargin if that's what you want.

I guess things don't change. PT Barnum was right.