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Top Spammer Busted
Author: Brett ThomasPublished: 31st May 2007
Less spam makes for a happy Furrball.
Robert Soloway, a 27-year-old from Seattle, Washington found himself in a Federal court yesterday facing crimes including (but not limited to) mail fraud, aggrivated identity theft and money laundering. Soloway is largely considered one of the top spammers in the world, and authorities are expecting an immediate and visible drop in the amount of spam clogging tubes worldwide.
The spammer was arrested along with a huge portion of his crew thanks to an identity theft complaint. Apparently, Soloway's team hijacked a company's webserver to use for its spam propagation, which is equivalent to stealing someone's virtual identity in US law. These charges quickly escalated with evidence seized at the time of arrest to include the money laundering and mail fraud. This isn't the first time he's been in trouble, either - Microsoft won a civil suit against him in 2003 for roughly $7 million, and a small Oklahoma ISP won another $10 million.
Identity theft is no trifling matter in America, so it is expected that Mr. Soloway will be seeing the inside of a cell for quite a long time. This will be the first time that the law is used to protect a domain name, however - so the court case could turn sour if the presiding judge doesn't agree with the new application. It seems that he or she would be alone if that were the case, though...a Grand Jury gave the green light to thirty-five separate indictments.
The judge determined that Mr. Soloway could still afford his own defense, despite the government freezing four of his bank accounts. According to the Federal Prosecutor, Soloway has made about $800,000 off of his acts, offering to sell up to "20 million mails in 15 days" for a mere $500. The work is widely thought to be completed by "zombie" computers - people who have no idea that their machines are sending spam - and then funneled through a hijacked domain.
Hopefully, this will be the last time we see Mr. Soloway for a very, very long time. Feel free to leave your thoughts about the matter in our forums, of course...but please, no spam.
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Comments (37)
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I hope they are able to track down more of these people every day and start ridding the world of this spam nonsense! :(
Though ... I somehow doubt that this will have any visible effect on the amount of spam we see in our mailboxes ...
-btb-
Death penalty for spammers!
if by "mailbox" you mean "a place where electronic mail goes until the intended recipient or his/her representative is able to access their email application" and by "spam" you mean "spam" then i agree...if you had any other meaning then i have no idea what you are talking about... ;)
I need to see figures to see if spam numbers will drop...
however, its nice to finally see some good action against these spamming *****
Hopefully this will send a message out to other wannabee spammers that if they are caught there are serious consequences
(sorry, couldn't resist)
I can't say I get any spam mail... but maybe I'm just lucky
yeah. he should have to share a cell with lots of men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship!
real easy:
An estimated 55 billion e-mail spam were sent each day in June 2006, an increase of 25 billion per day from June 2005
I can't help myself...should be aggravated.
This is great that this guy can't spam anymore! Less spam in my mailbox!
Gman22
And the only way that would have happened is due to the emails trying to sell viagra etc, now that would be ironic ;)
Sam
If he drops the soap in prison, he'll deserve what he gets...
And I want that cat...
when he gets out he get killed by the avalanche when he opens his door
About time!
Now, about all those zombies out there?
:?
Hell yeah. Now it's his turn for some unsolicited male. :)
:)
Maybe even warn those people who allow their PCs to become zombies.
nice...lmao
i remember a few years ago my bro would receive 80 mails a day of spam LOL
"Identity theft" is the interesting side - I've had my email address used as a "valid return" by spammers, it would be nice if that was illegal internationally.