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First Four People Charged Under CAN-SPAM Act

Posted by michael on from the world's-smallest-violin dept.

friedo writes "Four people in Detroit have been charged with emailing fraudulent sales pitches under the new federal CAN-SPAM Law. 'They were accused of disguising their identities in hundreds of thousands of sales pitches and delivering e-mails by bouncing messages through unprotected relay computers on the Internet.'"

20 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. And what about... by Tuxedo+Jack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can't they be charged under 18 USC 1030 for illegal access to systems? If they were relaying messages through machines, odds are the machines were trojaned, and that's considered illegal access.

    http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/1030_ne w. html

    --

    Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
    1. Re:And what about... by R2.0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There is a case to be made that the CAN SPAM act is unnecessary, and that other laws cover spammers actions.

      HOWEVER, applying those laws would require judges to take an existing law and stretch it a little to cover a new (to them) situation. Judges are loathe to do this, as they get appealed on it.

      But having passed a law *specifically* targetted at the conduct in question, the judge is off the interpretive hook. The law itself may be appealed, but not the judge's conduct.

      --
      "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  2. maximum penalty? by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 5, Interesting

    just curious how much they could be potentially sentanced for?

    any chance they would see the inside of a jail cell over this?

    or is it just a monetary fine (i.e. slap on the wrist)

    people who do this should be banned from technology a-la Kevin Mitnick

    1. Re:maximum penalty? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1, Interesting
      This is a highly specious argument. Spam takes a little bit of time from people that typically wouldn't be using it anyway. Anyone whose time is that valuable has someone to screen their email before they ever get it (assuming they want that kind of function.) You spend 20 seconds dealing with spam, and probably more time than that waiting for slashdot to refresh.

      Murder takes all the time from someone's life.

      The results of murdering someone are hard to determine. It could save the world! Or, it could hurt millions. There's simply no way to tell, because we can't peek into that alternate universe in which they didn't die, and see what it would be like.

      We are in general pretty sure that murder is wrong, though, which is why it's illegal.

      Put another way, would you rather be spammed, or killed?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:maximum penalty? by chris_mahan · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, but let's say you spend $700 per year (that's roughly $2 per day. (companies feel this, their spam-deleting employees are on payroll when deleting spam)
      Now, multiply that by 100 million people. That's 70 billion dollars wasted annually.

      Now, put 10,000 spammers in jail a year at 70K each. That's 700 million a year on jail costs.

      So, for 1 percent of the cost of spam you can effectively deal with it.

      For the sake of argument, let's say the cost of prosecution, jail, and all the other fees is really 2 billion per year. You'd still be saving the US 68 billion dollars a year. That would be enough to pay for the war in Iraq, or the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, or a kick ass space program.

      I say put the spammers in the slammer and send the keys to Mars for the rovers to play with.

      PS: For environmental reasons, the keys could be melted and reused for raw material :)

      --

      "Piter, too, is dead."

  3. Why not go after the buyers too? by tomstdenis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I mean we arrest people for soliciting sex right? [Despite the fact that both sex and commerce are legal... :-)].

    So why not make it illegal to buy wares from spammers who don't identify themselves [which keeps the door open for free speech by allowing people who do identify themselves a way out]?

    E.g. buy V1c0din from "HornyToad@hotmail.com" and get a 2000$ fine. Sadly the only way to really enforce this would be to send out spam themselves....

    Or what they could do is when they catch a spam operation keep the website/email live and catch the people trying to buy the stuff.

    Anyways, if you make people who are already leary about buying X.@.n.4.x from people off the net even more leary it hurt their business that much more.

    Tom

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    1. Re:Why not go after the buyers too? by Threni · · Score: 2, Interesting

      > I mean we arrest people for soliciting sex right?

      It's easy to assess the cost of spamming. How much damages do you demand of someone for buying something as a result of spam? How do you prove they knew it was spam and not something they'd asked to be part of?

      > Or what they could do is when they catch a spam operation keep the website/email
      > live and catch the people trying to buy the stuff.

      Entrapment.

  4. First step by otmar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While the CAN-SPAM act does not prohibit spam per se, it might manage to separate spam into:

    * "legal", clearly labeled spam: instant filter-fodder

    * clearly illegal spam, where the feds might use their investigative muscle and send the perp to club fed.

    While not perfect, I could live with that outcome.

  5. Re:Four little fish.... by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to Shiksaa, they're Alan Ralsky's little fish. Nail him, and the world's spam load really will drop.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  6. Re:Hit hard! by Steve+B · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Put aside the bleeding heart prejudice against cruel and unusual punishments.

    Joking aside, the prohibition against "cruel and unusual" punishments simply means that the punishment must be in proportion to the crime according to generally accepted standards of criminal justice. If one adds up the amount of time and money wasted as a direct result of a single spam run, one can make a case that the punishment for spamming ought to be similar to that for kidnapping someone for several weeks and cleaning out his bank account (the only difference is that the damage in the former case is spread among more people).

    --
    /. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
  7. Re:Who will be the first? by mangu · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Who will be the first to blame the owners of said unprotected relays for our spam woes


    I think it's not the owners of the relays who should be blamed, but the software suppliers instead. There are laws about defective products and software should be treated the same way. If a product is so badly designed that it becomes a public danger, then the company making it becomes liable, even if the buyer misuses it.

  8. Re:Good. by Allen+Zadr · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Yep

    The really sad part is that it took 10,000 complaints, before anything was done about the fraud.

    I don't believe that the FTC simply waited for CAN-SPAM's extra three years of prison to come into effect before deciding to look into the fraud.

    So, 10,000 complaints, and they'll look into convicting someone. Just remember, every complaint counts, so start reporting your fraudulent SPAMs.

    --
    Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
  9. Re:Good. by ichimunki · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OK. Two questions about this law: doesn't the naming violate Hormel's trademark (don't they specifically request the word spam to be lowercase only) or did Congress and the White House reach some sort of licensing agreement? Second, shouldn't it be CANT-SPAM?

    And to respond to your post: start reporting my fraudulent spams? I get about 500 to 1000 spams a day. But then I count "undeliverable" messages as part of my spam traffic. Ditto all those stupid MS Outlook worms. Can I report fraudulent use of my email addresses in the headers of emails I did not send but for which I receive rejection notices?

    --
    I do not have a signature
  10. Re:Note this detail: by Havokmon · · Score: 5, Interesting
    So they do act. Everybody, remember to forward a copy of all your spam to uce@ftc.gov as well as the usual post to nanas and LART to abuse@wherever. It seems that if the FTC build enough info on a spammer then they really will do something about it!

    Yep.. I was one of the domain owners who was joe-jobbed by these guys, and contacted by the FTC to provide them with copies of the complaints that I recevied.

    Apparently anti-spam/anti-virus services were the main targets of their joe-jobbing.

    That was a few months ago, February to be exact. It wasn't public because they didn't want to scare these guys off before they were ready.

    --
    "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
  11. Re:Deterent by gaijin99 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Some individuals, such as you, may be deterred by the punishments of others. Most aren't. This isn't opinion, but historic fact.

    The Soviet Union is the most extreme example in recent history. Their philosophy was the same as that of other nations based on deterence: if the punishment is harsh enough people will be detered from committing the crime. It didn't work, they kept instituting increasingly harsh punishments and crimes continued to be committed. Many people simply do not believe that they will be caught. Talk to people in prison and you will find that they generally break into two categories: those who say they are innocent, and those who say they didn't think they'd get caught. If you don't think you are going to get caught, it doesn't really matter what the punishment is. Its related to the success of the lottery: logically people know that their chances of winning are virtually non-existant. Less logically, people assume that *they* are the special one who is the exception to the rule.

    Arond 230 BC, the Ch'in dynasty in China also followed the deterence approach, and it directly lead to their downfall. In the army the penalty for being late was death, and the penalty for mutany was death. A group of conscripts wound up late one day and decided that they might was well mutany since it came to the same thing in the end. England ran into the same problem when they decided to "git tuff" on crime back around 1500 and they made punishments incredibly harsh in hopes of deterring criminals. That's where we got the phrase "as well to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb", since the punishment for both was the same.

    Obvously some people, a rather small minority it appears, are motivated by reason on these subjects. I don't play the lottory and I think that the fear of punishment is a factor in my own decision not to commit crimes. But I recognize that I'm not the norm here. Most people just don't think that way, as evidenced by the millions who play lotteries, and the millions in prison.

    --
    "Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
  12. Re:Four little fish.... by tassii · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A standard tactic for prosecuters in cases like this is to try the little fish first to work out the bugs in their cases and to set precedent. They do this in drug cases all the time.

    Once precedent is set, then they can go after the big boys who will be able to afford higher-priced lawyers. Whether or not they will go after the big boys is another question, but we can hope.

    --
    "I drank what?" - Socrates
  13. My Neighbor Worked on This Case! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He is a federal prosecutor based in Chicago and they have a wide latitude to pursue cases as they see fit. They set up hundreds of email honeypots and pursue any scams, false claims or in this case bunk medical products that are being peddled in spam. He didn't give me any details but he said - "Wednesday we are nabbing some perps..." and sure enough! Another thing he indicated to me was that they can choose their own path of pursuit... he personally likes to go after the 'Award Notifiation' scam - Send us $25 for your reward up to $10,000. That kind of thing. He is currently closing in on one of these individuals... bank accounts all over the world etc. Cellphone spam is another one of his pet peeves because a lot of carriers charge two cents or something per message received - so I forward all of my spam (10,000 pieces a day at least) into one of his honeypots to help his pursuit. Be warned spammers and scammers, there are very smart people who go to work everyday to catch you and they can subpoena server logs all along the way to find you. [+] sniper scope.

  14. Not in Detroit! by dnoyeb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Point of clarification. These bozos live or are operating out of a wealthy suburb of Detroit called "Bloomfield Hills." Where your average automotive executive calls home. Not us working class folk.

  15. West Bloomfield by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hey, I work in West Bloomfield where they arrested the guys. I work at the West Bloomfield Public Library. We've had people come in here before to try to spam and have kicked them out. I wonder if it is the same people.

  16. Re:Good. by ista · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The really good part is that this time proxy spammers are being caught by help of a fake proxy network.

    Usually proxy spammers aren't being caught because the open proxies don't have any useful logs at all.

    This time a fake proxy network created the illusion of an open proxy to the spammers, but really captured the incoming traffic with source ip adresses into logfiles, so the federal agents had some ip adresses to investigate into as well as spam samples to use for evidence.

    Together with those logfiles and the spam samples, it's pretty easy to catch the bad guys, but without such information, it's almost impossible to get them.