Seattle Spam King faces 26 year sentence
Spam… annoying isn’t it? Not quite as annoying as spending 26 years in the slammer though I’ll bet. That’s what Seattle man Robert Soloway, 28, faces after pleading guilty to electronic mail fraud, ordinary mail fraud, and not filing a tax return three years ago. The latter part doesn’t seem so exciting but this was believed to be when Soloway made over $300,000 from his nefarious internet practices.
Soloway was once rated as the eight largest spammer in the world and was arrested last year for 35 different counts, including fraud, identity theft and money laundering. He was accused of using Chinese ISPs to send spam email to 157.8 million email addresses and operating a botnet.
Alongside the maximum 26 year sentence, Soloway may also face a $625,000 fine. Unfortunately his attorney has said that he is essentially broke already and that there may not be a lot left to seize and certainly little chance of anyone getting anything back. So just remember folks, when a disenfranchised Nigerian royal emails you asking for just a few thousand quid to unlock their super special incredibly affluent bank account, and it seems too good to be true, you’ve already thought about it too hard and should delete it, you moron.
(via ars technica)
Related posts
Qype claims Facebook falloff is due to “group spam and pointless pokes”
Top 10 all-new spam email subject headings
Le Web 3 Live. Jason Calacanis: Seth Goldin, Dave Sifry, Ev Williams – they’re all to blame for spam on the web
