Disgruntled Fan Arrested, Indicted For Spam Attacks

An anonymous reader submits: "A *very* interesting precedent here might get set here. A California man has been arrested by the FBI for sending spam spoofing the From: email address of several Philadelphia-area newspaper editors and writers. The charges relate to the damage caused by having the bounces sent back to the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, with a total of more than 160,000 bounced emails. Maximum penalties: 471 years in federal prison, $117 million in fines." And not just arrested, either -- Reader red_dragon points to the indictment (PDF linked from this U.S. Attorney's Office release).

Comments

RTFA

[McSpew]

It isn't *just* that he sent thousands of spams. He allegedly hacked into others' PCs and sent the spams from them. Doing so with a bogus return address would have been bad enough, but he allegedly forged return addresses to redirect bounces to Philadelphia sportswriters. Unlike most spammers, this guy had an axe to grind, which made him far more traceable. Also, unlike most spammers, he attacked a very targeted group of people.

The clown involved in this mess is well known on the rec.sport.baseball newsgroup (and presumably in the Phillies newsgroup, as well). Nobody there is shedding a tear over his apprehension. He's a crank and a racist and nobody will miss his lunatic rants.

That said, if he were just a crank and a racist and hadn't done anything specifically illegal, this would be a good time to complain about the preferential treatment received by some in our society. But this particular case is about a guy who broke the law and did so in a way that pointed the finger right back at him. I have a hard time feeling outraged on his behalf.

Re:well...

[ninewands]

Quoth the poster:

" ... does it seem a little unfair that the indictment charges him with "hacking" ... "

No, the volume of mail they are talking about would require use of multiple "zombies" to send ... consider the fact that a significant amount of spam is sent through Win95/98/Me boxes with DSL/cable connections. Since none of those OSs include smtp servers, does it not seem necessary that this dork "hack" into the box, install his MTA and THEN set it to spewing out spoofed e-mails?

Just my US$0.02

Quoth the poster:

The guy is a major prick

[red_dragon]

A friend of mine is the webmaster of PhilaPhans.com, and was also affected by Allan Carlson's activities. He pointed me to this little note (scroll down to "Elysian Valley, Burbank"), where the guy's name pops up again:

Virginia de la Torre found a hate message in Aug. tucked inside a frozen chicken dinner. Robert Kennedy, a Long Beach lawyer representing the California Grocers Association says that since 1992, there have been more than 800 incidents of hate messages found inside products sold in stores in Ventura, Los Angeles and Orange counties. "You name the store, you name the product, and they've been hit," he said. "The slurs are against Jews and blacks and Hispanics. It's an ongoing problem." A Los Angeles Superior Court judge issued an injunction against Allan Eric Carlson of Glendale, prohibiting him from putting such pamphlets into packages in any of the 1,100 stores in the three-county area that are members of the grocers association. Carlson had been arrested and is on probation for two similar incidents; in one he vandalized notebooks and books with WAR [White Aryan Resistance] stickers and stamps; in a second, he assaulted a school custodian after being caught stuffing flyers into student lockers in Simi Valley.

So there you have it. Like McSpew said, he's a crank and a racist.

Clark is paraphrasing Himmler

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I agree with General Clark: if you want assault weapons, join the Army -- they've got lot's of 'em.

General clark is paraphrasing Himmler (along with other NAZI sources).

"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't
serve the State."

-- Heinrich Himmler

"All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately ... The SS, SA and Stahlhelm give every respectable German man the opportunity of campaigning with them. Therefore anyone who does not belong to one of the above named organizations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his weapon ... must be regarded as an enemy of the national government."

-- SA Oberfuhrer of Bad Tolz, March, 1933

(Clark had to join the Democrats once he uttered his version. There's no longer a chance he could collect enough Republican primary votes to secure a presidential nomination.)

Re:Punishment fitting the crime?

[Wateshay]

Well, fines aren't meant to be indicitive of what monetary damages were done, but are rather meant to be set at a level high enough to keep you from doing it. The last time I got caught speeding, I didn't do $80 in damages to anyone, but I still got ticketed for that.

As for the jail time, he won't serve anywhere close to that. Even if he gets the maximum sentence on each count, those sentences will almost certainly be served concurrently, not consecutively. It's not uncommon for white collar crimes to add up to rediculously high maximum jail terms, because they usually involve violating a whole bunch of different laws. It's easy to be guilty of 300 counts of fraud, but a lot harder to be guilty of 300 counts of murder. On the other hand, 300 counts of fraud will in almost every case be served concurrently, and 300 counts of murder would very likely be served consecutively.