About 10:30 AM on September 20, 1996, Richard Machado entered EG1122 And sat down at one of the Macintosh computers (labmac3) in this public access computing lab. The University of California, Irvine system requires students to log into the lab machines in order to use certain services. Machado logged into labmac3 at 10:26 AM, using his user ID.

Using the settings in Netscape Mail, he changed the contents of the "From:" field from his actual user ID, Richard Machado <rmachado>, to "Mother Fucker (Hates Asians)" <mfucker@uci.edu>. He sent two test messages to himself to determine if the change in the "From:" field actually worked. It did.

He then used the finger command to list all the people who were logged into the system at that time. From the long list of people logged in he selected 59 individuals, all of whom had one thing in common-- they had Asian looking names. He placed all these user IDs into the "To:" field of a message in Netscape Mail. He also included himself in the To: field.

He composed a message threatening Asian students on campus, and sent it at 10:54 AM. At 10:56 he logged out and left the room.

At 10:57 AM he walked into computer lab room EG1140. He sat down at one computer and could not manage to log in. After failing to log in, he left the room. About ten minutes later, he reentered the same computer lab room and sat down at another computer (pmac13). He checked his messages to see if his earlier message had created any email traffic among those who received it (remember that he listed himself in the "To;" field along with the other people). Since he saw no reaction, he decided to send the message again. He did this at 11:14.

He then proceeded to read his email and use his web browser for about half an hour. Responses to the email were coming in. He composed several replies to these responses, posing as a person who had been targeted by the mail. At that time (11:45), two people from the Office of Academic Computing entered the room and asked him for ID and a telephone number. They said he had been found to be violating school policy. Richard claimed he was not, showed them his student ID and gave them a fake telephone number.

At 11:47 Richard Machado left EG1140 without making any further protest.

When he was later asked about his reason for sending the email, Machado reported sending it out of "frustration," and because he disliked his Asian roommate. Machado said he felt that Asians "prospered" more in school and that they raised the grading curve so far he could not do well. He claimed he just wanted to scare them a little with his email, and get some response.