First Four People Charged Under CAN-SPAM Act

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.'"

Comments

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, I doubt this will make any difference - they'll just forge more headers.

Re:Good.

[kemapa]

True, but allow me to expand on your point a little bit. It will also not make any difference because American laws have no jurisdiction in other countries (unfortunately =P). If spammers really worry about this law (which they won't), all the must do is move their operations over seas. And in a spammer's case, moving over seas doesn't even involve literally moving himself / herself and family over there. Everything can be done remotely. I don't know what system would work best to fix the problem, that is an argument for another day, but I know for sure the US federal laws are not going to be the answer.

Re:Good.

[Steve B]

And in a spammer's case, moving over seas doesn't even involve literally moving himself / herself and family over there. Everything can be done remotely.

Nope. It doesn't matter if he relays his computer crimes through the Spirit Rover commlink -- if he's phyically in the US and the Feds have the evidence, he can be arrested and charged.

Bottom line: If the Feds are serious about enforcing the law (which is the real rub), a spammer needs to physically get his ass out of the US, unless he doesn't mind having said ass traded back and forth for ciggies.

Re:Good.

[Phisbut]

And in a spammer's case, moving over seas doesn't even involve literally moving himself / herself and family over there. Everything can be done remotely.

In North-America, using a computer to commit a crime is a crime. Then, using a computer to access a computer to commit a crime, is that also a crime? I think it is and would result in the same charges.

Plus, if a spammer is physically located overseas, if it happens that his spam relays on servers in North-America, then didn't he use a computer to commit a crime in North-America, therefore commiting a crime in North-America and thus giving the opportunities for north-american juridiction to get the guy?

I might live overseas, but if I commit a crime in North-America, then I expect the north-american police to grab me.

Re:Good.

[malchus842]

Pretty much true, though Americans can be charged with crimes committed outside the US in certain situations. And certain types of crimes against Americans already have extradition treaties with some countries. In the end, only treaties can ensure that the offenders can be dealt with across borders, and even then, there will likely be countries that, for whatever reason, refuse to sign extradition treaties with the US.

Re:Good.

[GreyPoopon]

And in a spammer's case, moving over seas doesn't even involve literally moving himself / herself and family over there.

Actually, it would in this case. If a spammer is remotely operating machines overseas, they are still breaking the law by sending the unsolicited email to recipients in the United States. If they are caught in the US, they will be prosecuted here. So, they get to choose. They can either enjoy their life as a spammer and never ever set foot in the US again, or they can cease spamming. They may also choose to spam more covertly, but there are no guarantees there.

As some of our friends in Europe have already pointed out, most of the spam messages are advertising "products" available for people in the United States. While that doesn't guarantee that the money paying for the spam is coming from the US, it gives a strong indicator. Therefore, US federal laws WILL do a pretty good job to at least alter the way these people do "business." The end result remains to be seen.

The biggest challenge is tracking down and successfully prosecuting the perps. It will be interesting to see how this trial goes and whether the Feds can make the charges stick.

Re:Good.

[Allen Zadr]

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.

Re:Good.

[Shakrai]

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

As weak as this law is that is still a little unfair. Do you think the Feds can instantly go and toss someone in jail based on a few complaints? They need to investigate it themselves before they can do anything. That takes time. For all you know the investigation itself started after they received the first complaint about these morons.

I don't think you want a society where they instantly throw you in jail based on a few complaints submitted over the Internet.

Re:Good.

[ichimunki]

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?

Re:Good.

[RazzleFrog]

Can't spam implies an opt out service which would be very bad. Can Spam means you have to opt in to receive spam. The Do Not Call list is just the opposite. You have to sign up to the list to block the calls. Imagine if you had to sign up every email address you have?

Re:Good.

[budgenator]

I might live overseas, but if I commit a crime in North-America, then I expect the north-american police to grab me.

There is a rule of thumb that has to be applied,
if the USG, United States Government, wants me more than the effort + the political fall-out from grabbing me costs them, then they are going to scarf me up. If you are very naughty, even being the president of a country might not be enough. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm saying that, that's the way it is. Many things are a crime to the USG no matter who you are, where you committed them, and against who.

Re:Good.

[zx75]

American laws have no jurisdiction in other countries (unfortunately =P).

Unfortunately? I would say thankfully. And I'm pretty sure most of your countrymen would as well considering that American's complain about bad and ignorant laws that are constantly being passed by the US Congress more than foreigners do. We might sympathize with your situation, but we have our own laws to complain about. But I certainly don't think enforcing the DMCA, or the Patriot Act, or the US Patent Office on the rest of the world would be appreciated.

Re:Good.

[ista]

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.

Re:Good.

[jonbryce]

If you are sitting in a room in the US sending illegal spam, then you are sitting in a room in the US sending illegal spam whether you are controlling an open proxy in the US, in China or anywhere else in the world.

If you are sitting in a room in the US sending illegal spam, then you can be prosecuted in the US for sitting in a room sending illegal spam.

Of course if you start breaking into computers in other countries, the governments in those other contries might want to prosecute you for committing offences in their country as well. This doesn't make what you are doing in the US any less illegal.

Four little fish....

[REBloomfield]

That won't even dent the problem. At least they're proving that their serious though, but unfortunately, I don't believe in every little helps in the case.

Re:Four little fish....

[idesofmarch]

This is the first prosecution, and by the nature of it being first, there are no others, so it seems like an isolated effort. Are you saying there should never be a first? Under that logic, there is never any point in doing anything.

I am particularly pleased the government is charging the guy for unauthorized relay. As shocked as he may be at the visit from authorities, I am sure his victims were equally shocked when they discovered that hundreds of thousands of emails were being relayed through their servers.

Re:Four little fish....

[meringuoid]

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

Re:Four little fish....

[tassii]

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.

Re:Four little fish....

[Eggplant62]

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

From my own memory and from googling, Daniel Lin has been involved in operatings with Ralsky as early as 2001. In fact, when I was very actively tracking Ralsky, I wrote the following little gem tying Ralsky, Lin and Ken Holt out of Oklahoma together in their email barrage activities:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=daniel+lin+ral sk y+grindbind&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=Pine. LNX.4.33L2.0111211350240.1594-100000%40beavis&rnum =2

Read and enjoy.

Yee Haw

[2names]

Hopefully, this will lead to cleaner net'vironment.

Aw, who am I kidding. Prosecuting people has never been a deterent to the crime.

Re:Yee Haw

[the_weasel]

Prosecuting people has never been a deterent to the crime.

Are you sure about that? Have you :

Ever killed someone? Beaten them so badly they need medium term hospitilization? Broken the windshield of a car, doused the interior with gasoline, and lit it on fire?

I watched my peers do that (and more) and I watched them get prosecuted. Forget 'right and wrong'. When I get really really (really) mad, the thing that stops me from lighting you on fire isn't the idea that its wrong to do it, but the near certainty that it will f*ck up the rest of my life.

Call me selfish.

I think punishment does work as a deterrent, provided the punishment is consistently applied, and there are no exceptions. The problem with punishment for non-violent crimes is consistency. If I steal your car stereo, I can get 5 years in prison for that. But I can steal your life savings, and often escape prosecution altogether, provided I use the right approach (investments).

Hmmm....

[SavedLinuXgeeK]

"No one's done this before," Feinberg said. "It will be fun -- not for my client but for me professionally." I wonder whose side the Attourney really is on.

Re:Hmmm....

[andih8u]

like any attorney, he's on his own side. All he cares about is maybe making a little cash, but more importantly, getting his name in the papers. He couldn't care less about what happens to his client...I don't either, but that's beside the point.

Four charged...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we just need four convicted.

And what about...

[Tuxedo Jack]

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

Re:And what about...

[R2.0]

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.

Re:And what about...

[Shakrai]

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

You could say that about a lot of feel good legislation that comes out of Washington and your state capital. Take my states ban on cell phones while driving -- we already had about a dozen laws on the books about distracted driving and people who had actually been cited under those laws for using their cell phone. But let's go one step further and add yet another law to the books (in an election year no less) because it was a popular issue and we need votes.

Tee hee..

[Tore S B]

The Lins and Chung could not be located at any of the addresses or telephone numbers listed in the court documents.

...all one hundred thousand of them.

maximum penalty?

[JeanBaptiste]

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

Re:maximum penalty?

[dsanfte]

Seriously, save jail for violent offenders. There's not enough room as it is. Spammers may be annoying, but they won't mug you on the street and rape your kids.

Re:maximum penalty?

[Woogiemonger]

Seriously, save jail for violent offenders. There's not enough room as it is. Spammers may be annoying, but they won't mug you on the street and rape your kids.

Umm, just because it's a white collar crime doesn't mean they shouldn't see a jail cell. With all that spamming, surely they can pay for their own jail cell. And while they won't rape your kids, they'll show them enough naked old men, kiddie porn, and animal lovin' to make them vomit. Not to mention how they outright hurt the economy. I would like to see them pick up the soap in prison a few times.

Re:maximum penalty?

[mumblestheclown]

let's do a little math.

let's say there is one murder per 50,000 in the population. let's say that the murder of this person affects 5 people (including the deceased) so badly that the rest of their life is ruined.

on average, this will happen to each involved at the midpoint of their lives (let's say).

So, in total, murderers remove roughly 1/5000 of life from each individual in society.

Do *you* spend more than 1/5000 of your life (roughly 20 seconds per day) dealing with spam? I do.

So, based on that (admittedly very rough) metric, who is worse?

Re:maximum penalty?

[Nuclear Elephant]

They don't seem to have any problem sending my kids donkey porn. What makes you think they wouldn't rape my kids? A suitable sentence would be chemical castration. That'd get them using that penis enlargement cream.

Re:maximum penalty?

[dj245]

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

I must protest your downplaying of the ever popular "slap on the wrist". Not only does being slapped on the wrist hurt really hard, but the social awkwardness of being accused of having been given only a slap on the wrist far outweighs any alternative methods that may be more violent. Having been slapped on the wrist myself on numerous occasions, I can tell you that one never really recovers from being slapped on the wrist, and the shame of the slapping on the wrist often drives the bearer of the slapping to cover it up with a watch or tatoo.

Do not mock the slap on the wrist unless you too have been slapped.

Re:maximum penalty?

[stevesliva]

The murderer! What, are you going to euthanize the stupid because they waste your time?

Re:maximum penalty?

[chris_mahan]

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 :)

Re:maximum penalty?

[mumblestheclown]

let me try to explain it to you slowly.

what would you rather have:

A) no spam email worldwide forever
or
B) one less murder worldwide

Now, if you said "B of course, because all the spam in the world is not worth one human life" then I say to this:

yes, but what if deleting all this spam costs the equivalent of 10,000 lifetimes of people's lives?

If you still say "B", then, well, I hope you never get a job that matters. Certainly don't be president.

Re:maximum penalty?

[acidrain69]

Dividing crisis and damage to a life across the population? That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a whlie on slashdot.

Why not go after the buyers too?

[tomstdenis]

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

Re:Why not go after the buyers too?

[Threni]

> 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.

Re:Why not go after the buyers too?

[spellraiser]

Legally, this will never work. Why?

E.g. buy V1c0din from "HornyToad@hotmail.com" and get a 2000$ fine.

But you are not buying from "HornyToad@hotmail.com"; you are buying from Joe Schmoe via www.cheapdrugs.com. With spam, you never reply back to buy the stuff; you use an alternate method that's given to you in the spam email (such as a website). Unless the product you're buying is itself illegal, you can never be successfully prosecuted for buying it. Proving that you bought it because of a spam you received is impossible, and beside the point anyway.

Even though spam is the only method used to advertise the site, that's irrelevant. The site is there, and is offering a legal product. Anyone is free to visit it and buy whatever they want from it. The spam is the real problem, and can only be tackled directly.

Re:Why not go after the buyers too?

[tomstdenis]

"and the poor in jail..."

I never bought that fact. They're poor because they buy 100s of dollars of drugs.

I mean I'm "poor" but I also own a fast PC, lots of textbooks, a gameboy, two flashcarts, etc, etc, etc..

Excuse me while I shed a tear for the poor and impoverished that spend every time they get on booze so they can sleep in parking lots while I walk to/from school.

Excuse me while I shed a tear for the school dropouts who mocked me in earlier grades and now beg me for money so they can keep up their habits.

Excuse me while I shed a tear for the hungry, refused food from shelters who's sole requirement is that you are sober.

Excuse me while I shed a tear for the tired, refused beds for not being sober.

Excuse me.

Tom

Re:Why not go after the buyers too?

[mrtrumbe]

You should shed a tear because they aren't doing anything differently than their white counterparts. All statistics indicate that white consume as much, or more, drugs than minorities. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, even though less minorities use drugs, they are incarcerated for it at a far higher rate.

Read all the facts for yourself here.

I agree that anyone who uses drugs instead of providing for their families or themselves shouldn't get much simpathy. But at the same time, they aren't doing anything that the rest of America isn't doing. And, being poor, they statistically have a far higher rate of mental and emotional problems than their well-to-do counterparts. Ever hear of coping?

But I think the real tragedy is that the poor get treated differently by our system of law. That is the real injustice. The fact that poor/minorities are incarcerated at a higher rate than their well-to-do counterparts and use the same amount of drugs indicates an inequality in enforcement/prosecution of drug criminals. What happened to justice being blind?

Taft

Hrmm

[acehole]

I guess they're wondering if the criminal charges have an 'opt-out' list....

Re:Hrmm

[tomstdenis]

yeah just click on this link

http://opt-out-lists.com@oem.com:24.112.8.23/?co de dinfo=youremailidentifierasahugenumber ;-)

Who will be the first?

[goldspider]

"'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.'"

Who will be the first to blame the owners of said unprotected relays for our spam woes, as opposed to the spammers themselves?

Re:Who will be the first?

[mangu]

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.

First step

[otmar]

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.

So, how they gonna be sentenced?

[JosKarith]

How's about opening up a new e-mail account, and hooking them up to an electric chair that delivers 1 volt per spam mail it gets...

10,000 Complaints

[Nuclear Elephant]

Officials at the Federal Trade Commission, who planned to announce the arrests in Washington on Thursday, told U.S. postal investigators they had received more than 10,000 complaints about unwanted e-mails sent by the company. So they only waited a half hour before signing a warrant?

Not great but I'm hopeful

[LabRat007]

I don't think this will affect the situation in the short run. I do think that it is a step in the right direction. Perhaps new laws wont be too far off when its noticed that overall CAN-SPAM doesnt have a significant effect on the amount of SPAM; although it will have an effect on where its sent from.

Only 4?

[Maljin Jolt]

Only four pieces of canned spammers?

Looking in my today's inbox, that's no big difference...

Obligatory Heavy Metal Quote...

[Frennzy]

Hangin's too good for 'em.
Burrrnin's too good for 'em...
(T)He(y) should be torn into little pieces and buried ALIVE!!!!
I'LL KILL HIIM! KILL!! STERRRRNNNNN!!!

Four charged but...

[andih8u]

they can't find three of them.

Re:Four charged but...

[Nuclear Elephant]

That's b/c they met some college girls on the 'net who were looking for someone to chat with and impressed them with their university diploma. They were last seen traveling the world and spending all the money a Nigerian diplomat gave them. Just follow the smell of penis enlargement cream.

So?

[Robert Hayden]

What is this going to do to stem the tide of the other 3800 spams I have received in the last 18 hours?

CAN-SPAM is simply an enabling law.

Re:So?

[jfengel]

Interesting point. How much of those 3,800 spams are "legal" spam (valid opt-out lists, non-falsified headers, snail-mail addresses) under the MAY-SPAM (er, CAN-SPAM) act?

Those spams are rather easy to filter out, but I suspect it is a fairly small number of those 3,800, and the least annoying ones (because the filters take care of it). This law addresses the illegal spams, which have taken pains to make themselves hard to filter.

Thus far nobody's been prosecuted, and it's only recently that the punishments have even been defined. You won't see any reduction of spam, or even significant conversion to "legal" spam, at least until this case is over.

Maybe a few convictions will throw enough of a scare into most of the remaining ones that they'll comply with the law and be filtered out. I'm a bit surprised they don't already: anybody smart enough to install a spam filter isn't going to buy your v1@gra, so save yourself the risk of prosecution. There appear to be more than enough fools left.

Then the really tricky part begins, dealing with the most malicious of spammers, the ones using hijacked computers, who are very hard to trace. I'm afraid such people will launch a DOS on the entire mail system, relaying so much random but non-commercial mail (maybe even just resending previously sent message to other people) to make it hard to filter out the intended message by hand. Only a moron would click through such a spam, but it appears that the Internet is populated by a sufficiency of morons.

People?

[Anonymous Coward]

First Four People Charged Under CAN-SPAM Act

You're giving the spammers too much credit.

Further info

[Strange_Attractor]

Here's an article from the tech writer at the Detroit Free Press. He focuses more on the big companies whose relays were abused.

Note this detail:

[meringuoid]

Officials at the Federal Trade Commission, who planned to announce the arrests in Washington on Thursday, told U.S. postal investigators they had received more than 10,000 complaints about unwanted e-mails sent by the company.

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!

Re:Note this detail:

[Havokmon]

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.

Sweet!

[morganjharvey]

Sweet!
As long as they don't have to send everyone an apology...

Burn the witches

[N8F8]

I just hope the penalty is severe enough to make CAN Spam economically unviable. Either way, I doubt it will stem the flow of Spam from China and Africa.

Re:Burn the witches

[goldspider]

Of course, Netcraft confirms that most spam originates from within the U.S.

Huh?

[Erik Fish]

If they're going to go after someone in the Detroit area why not Alan Ralsky?

Re:Huh?

[Eggplant62]

If they're going to go after someone in the Detroit area why not Alan Ralsky?

Oh, but they have. These are the two bit tech creeps that have several things that are attractive to Ralsky:

1. Technical knowledge. Ralsky is no technician. He's a sales man and business operator. He pays these guys to run his servers for him.

2. Foreign Language Skills: The Lins and Chung are obviously of Chinese heritage, and probably bilingual or trilingual to boot, able to correspond and communicate with the Chinese hosts who house Ralsky's servers (see this and this).

3. Young guys who can easily take the heat away from the master criminal in this case, Ralsky. Having a layer or two of personnel away from the kingpin is a classic way of lending plausible deniability for Ralsky. When asked if he knows any of the perps, he simply says, "I never saw them in my life." Bingo.

Now, instead of swooping in on Ralsky, you go after the little guys and get them to turn State's evidence in trade for an easier plea. The feds are doing this right: Approach the kingpin slowly via the little guys and *really* mount up the evidence against him, to make their own case against him *incontrovertible*.

As the owner of the negatives of Ralsky's house, I hope he fries, right along with the four other little fish.

Anyone up for a cookout??

Do you need CAN-SPAM insurance?

[SmackCrackandPot]

By just clicking on the link below, and entering your credit card details in the form provided, you too can get instant legal protection from a CAN-SPAM lawsuit. This is a one time only offer.

Click [here] if you do not wish to hear from any of our exclusive offers in the future.

Agreed - Re: Good.

[Allen Zadr]

This simply a case for the Federal Trade Commission. The inclusion of CAN-SPAM law into the criminal charges is merely an after thought (as I mentioned before):

From the Article:

Investigators said they consulted Dr. Michael D. Jensen, a medical professor at the Mayo Medical School, who confirmed that ingredients in the weight-loss product sold in the disputed e-mails wouldn't work.

By this, as well as the FTC's involvement (see FTC link above), this is a simple case of fraud. The CAN SPAM sentancing guidelines provide for tacking an extra couple of years to the sentance in such a case.

The addition to CAN-SPAM in this case will only serve to attract more attention to the problem of E-mail fraud. My previous statement remains, "an extra 1 to 3 years tacked onto a felony conviction is nothing compared to the sentance that is already being faced."

Chinese servers

[Monoman]

So all these Chinese servers sending out spam turn out to be a three Chinese guys in Detroit. :-)

Re:Hit hard!

[Steve B]

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).

Let's hope...

[Lobo_Louie]

Let's hope they're inundated with "get out of jail free" emails for their eternity.

Two people...

[dj245]

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.'"

DJ245 writes "Two people at Slashdot have been charged with writing bad slashdot stories under the new Slashdot story guidelines. 'They are accused of using improper verb tense and not putting in a final conspiracy or troll wibble at the conclusion.'"

Re:Two people...

[tehcyder]

Two people have been killed. They were accused of spamming.

Sounds OK to me.

Where do spammers fit...

[i8a4re]

in the prisoner hierarchy. While I don't know first hand, I've heard that depending on your crime, you basically have a rank in the big house. Murders are high while pedophiles are low. While the spammers crime is no where near as bad as the two afore mentioned criminals, everyone except other spammers and this guy hate spammers. So where would a spammer fall on the prison's hierarchy?

Re:Where do spammers fit...

[i.r.id10t]

Proceeded through, and I finally came to see the very last man. I walked in,
Sat down, after a whole big thing there. I walked up, and I said, "What do you
Want?" He said, "Kid, we only got one question: Have you ever been arrested?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of Alice's Resteraunt Massacre with full
Orchestration and five-part harmony and stuff like that, and other phenomenon.

He stopped me right there and said, "Kid, have you ever been to court?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored
Glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of
Each one--

He stopped me right there and said, "Kid I want you to go over and sit down on
That bench that says 'Group W.' Now, kid!"

And I walked over to the bench there, and there's--Group W is where they put
You if you may not be MORAL enough to join the army after committin' your
Special crime.

There was all kinds of mean, nasty and ugly-lookin' people on the bench there
--there was mother rapers--father-stabbers, father-rapers! FATHER-RAPERS
Sittin' right there on the bench next to me!

And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible and crime fightin' guys were
Sittin' there on the bench, and the meaniest, ugliest, nastiest one--the
Meanest father-raper of them all--was comin' over to me.

And he was mean and nasty and horrible and all kinds of things, and he sat
Down next to me. He said, "Kid, what'd you get?"

I said, "I didn't get nothin'. I had to pay fifty dollars and pick up the
Garbage." He said, "What were you arrested FOR, kid?" and I said,
"Litterin'."

And they all moved away from me on the bench there, with the hairy eyeball and
All kinds of mean, nasty things, till I said, "And creatin' a nuisance."

And they all came back, shook my hand and we had a great time on the bench
Talkin' about crime, mother-stabbin', father-rapin', --all kinds of groovy
Things that we was talkin' about on the bench, and everything was fine.

Fun Fun Fun!

[Steve B]

"No one's done this before," Feinberg said. "It will be fun -- not for my client but for me professionally."

Here's hoping that he sees this as his big chance to try the "insult the judge to his face every fifteen seconds" strategy he daydreamed about in law school.

it all depends

[kajoob]

I would think a lot would have to do with the content of the emails, we're they offering legitimate deals or not? If they were looking to scam people, then I think possibly they could be charged under 18 USC 1030 (a)(4) which is is more than the "mere hack" required in (a)(2).

Usually people are charged under (a)(5) which pertains to outsiders 'hacking' in and causing damage. The damage part is essential and I believe the minimum amount of actual damages required is $5k (forgive me if that's wrong, i'm doing this from memory). Although to be honest with you, as most slashdotters know, the damages are always trumped up in these cases - a company can go out and basically buy a bunch of routers or whatever and say it was to "Re-secure" their network and that will be considered damages. See United States v. Middeleton 231 F.3d 1207 (2000).

Serve 1 day in jail for each spam email sent.

[BrentRJones]

Seems only fair that the convicted felons have to do serious time.

Perhaps we could have them write:
"I am sorry for wasting people's time and resourses." Maybe 10 to the power of # spams sent.

-- ..

Evidence???

[El_Ge_Ex]

Investigators said they consulted Dr. Michael D. Jensen, a medical professor at the Mayo Medical School, who confirmed that ingredients in the weight-loss product sold in the disputed e-mails wouldn't work.

Remarks about spamming itself aside... one has to question the means they are using to charge these guys. How ambigious is this law if the only evidence they needed was, not that they were spamming, but whether the product they were spamming was legitamite.

This proves that politicans don't really care about technology. If this idea were applied to drug law, dealers would get arrested for selling sitty coke instead of getting hit for just selling coke.

but then of course, all these guys are on crack anyways...

-B

Re:Evidence???

[WormholeFiend]

one thing I know is, once someone is in law enforcement's reticle, the police tries to lay as many charges as possible.

1) illegal spamming
2) misleading adverts
3) selling snakeoil
etc.

it's called not putting all your eggs in the same basket. if spammers violate multiple acts and are charged under all of those, the police are likelier to get at least one conviction.

make the punishment fit the crime

[WormholeFiend]

they pollute?

have the judge sentence them to a cleanup job for a few years. preferably something really stinky and disgusting.

slave labor, i know. but it should teach them a lesson, more so than being someone's b!tch in a federal PMITA prison.

Forgot the fraud complaint link...

[Allen Zadr]

econsumer.gov Your site for cross-border e-commerce complaints.

A joint project of consumer protection agencies from 17 nations:

http://www.econsumer.gov/english/

A tough problem

[AnotherLostAtom]

This is a very difficult problem. As long as the web is so open and allows anyone to e-mail, this will keept happening. What we need is someone to build a new e-mail system, only run by certified players. That is secure, and all the e-mail is fully encrypted on the servers. Now should this not be a national concern? We already have the law makers on our side. So, techno geeks, have the patience to phone or actually! mail! That way we can no longer keept getting ignored. I bet you if all of us here at slashdot wrote to out government, we would make the news!! Come on people !! Lead the charge!! All we need is to get noticed, and to make bush and kerry realize they need to talk about these issues in public! Just because we don't watch TV doesn't mean we should get punished!

Re:Deterent

[gaijin99]

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.

My Neighbor Worked on This Case!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not in Detroit!

[dnoyeb]

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.

Free Speech?

[heybo]

[which keeps the door open for free speech by allowing people who do identify themselves a way out]?

Why does free speech ALWAYS get brought into this. Spam has NOTHING to do with free speech. The Internet is not free. I pay for MY connection. I pay for my servers. People PAY me to use them. You see this is how I eat!!!! Every site or service you use is paid for my someone. They may allow you "to use" the site for free but it is not free. The person that owns the site can cut it off at anytime. If the person that has the site doesn't pay his ISP then they cut it off. Spammers pay me nothing. They do nothing but cost me money

Free speech is being able to express yourself in public, which I am totally for. If these Spammers want to stand on the side of the road and hawk their wares then fine, but when it comes into this box without expressed permission from me then this is theft of services.

Come on people learn this the Internet is built out of PRIVATE networks that ALLOW public access. Not free networks owned my the public.

Personally I feel jail is wrong in this case. I will be happy to skin them alive with a dull knife would be better. I'll be happy to do the carving for FREE!!!!

Making the net safe for corporations that spam...

[fmaxwell]

Let's get one thing straight right now: These people are not being charged with spamming. They are being charged with spamming in a manner not in compliance with the CAN-SPAM act. Dell, General Electric, and Microsoft (for example) will all be able to comply with the CAN-SPAM act -- it was written for their ilk. Big corporations don't have to worry about some anti-spam vigilante threatening them or their family. They don't have to be concerned that their credit will be destroyed. Then don't have to worry about their phones ringing all night long. The won't be particularly upset if pictures of their headquarters and their contact information appear on Slashdot. They can afford to hire operators to man the phones and deal with angry spam recipients.

These charges are just part of clearing out the small-time operators in order to make room for the big boys. Our fine friends in government want to get rid of the sleaziest stuff so the Fords, Walmarts, and Panasonics of the world can spam without being associated with the Internet porn and snake-oil spams. When the penis enlarger and herbal viagra spams end, then you can expect to see your mailbox filled with spam from major corporations -- all of whom can afford Internet pipes that would make the small-time spammers weak in the knees.

CAN-SPAM is not the last word. Call your Congressional representatives and tell them that you want legislation with teeth that makes all spam (usolicited bulk e-mail) illegal. Make it illegal to send it, illegal to pay someone else to send it, illegal to relay it, and illegal for ISPs to knowingly provide safe havens for spammers. Require that ISPs act within 24 hours of getting notification of spam activity and that they not "warn" spammers. Pressure other countries to pass similar legislation. Don't tell me that it can't be done -- just look at the DMCA-like laws being enacted everywhere and how the draconian laws favored by the RIAA and MPAA are being passed throughout the world due to U.S. pressure.

Re:Stopping spam by closing SMTP relays

[heybo]

Open relays aren't that big of a problem these days. Most mail servers have been locked up over the years. Now where the spam comes from is hijacked PCs on broadband connections. When we trace spam the really bad ones came from bettys_machine.comcast.com. They use that machine once and then move on.

Want to put a dent in spam then clean your machine. Use anti-virus software and run the updates. Use a firewall and block outgoing traffic in port 25.

Pay for mail

[cazzazullu]

If you could make it technically and legally possible to make everybody pay a small amount for each mail they send (a few cents will do), wouldn't this solve all spam/open-smtp-server problems (And also those damned speed-clicking-must-forward-joke-to-everyone people)? The providers won't complain, and for those few bucks a month extra I wouldn't mind either. The extra raised money could then be used for better infrastructure, security, charity (hahaha!), ...

Or at least have some kind of organization that manages mails/adresses and makes people pay to send a mail to their domain. Then use the money to keep this domain clean.

Zombied a lawyer's computer

[Generic Guy]

The CNN article is light on details, but I suspect these stories are related.

My wife is a bakruptcy attorney (in the Detroit area), which means she deals with the federal bar and federal courts, instead of local district courts. Anyway, one of her counterparts across town had an Exchange server zombied. Somehow I think having a pissed-off federal lawyer probably caused more action than the "10,000 complaints" from regular joes cited in the article.

I guess the morale is: If you're going to commit cybercrime, don't do it against a lawyer.

extra 1 to 3 years tacked onto a felony conviction

[budgenator]

extra 1 to 3 years tacked onto a felony conviction is nothing
Oh yes it is, while you go in thinking it's nothing usualy because it's served concurrently with the primary sentence; I can guarentee that the Parole board will look at it differently. In fact if you cop a plea, you generaly have waived your right to be presumed inocent. The means you did, what you were charged with, not just what you were convicted of. Another Gotcha is these guys now have two felonies, after they do say 7 years of a 7-12 federal sentence, they get out on parole and blow a stop light, in Michigan they are now 3 time lossers and get 1-3 in a MI prison as an habitual offender.
Being in prison is no joke either, think about this;
you're now working for 28 cents an hour, your wife divorces your sorry ass, and child-support leaves you with $7.00 a month disposeable income. If you get sick or injured, medicade has a $3.00 co-pay that's almost half a months income, He'll only tell you "take some asprin and see me in two weeks" so there goes the rest of the months income (don't no-show either, you'll get a ticket for disobeying a direct order, that the parole board won't like). No these guys are going to become four more kiss-ass punks in a world of hurt and are probably too stupid to realise it.

West Bloomfield

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Actually...

[Featureless]

Better to throw them in "court" based on a few million pieces of prima-facie evidence called "their spam."

Let's stop trying to make excuses; the government has utterly failed in its duty to prosecute blatant, obvious cases of egregious fraud (and many other kinds of criminal activity; pump & dump, illegal drugs, younameit) - that were broadcast to millions of Americans and reached more people than many TV shows.

And if they proceed in prosecuting people at this puny rate, I would say they are continuing to fail.

Yeah, sure, if we lock up all the domestic spammers, we'll still get spam from Africa and China, but let's actually get to that point first, and deal with it then.

I don't know about anyone else, but for many orgs I know spam is reaching a kind of crisis point, where anyone who has to publish their address is, within a matter of months, getting hundreds of spam for every few legitimate messages. It is rendering email useless.

A minor economic setback, I guess? Too trivial for the feds to bestir themselves?

CAN SPAM is a sad joke, but the punch line is that someone may have actually waited for it to go after these guys...

Complimentary summary & tin-foil discussion

[maximilln]

At first glance the knee-jerk reaction is to cheer the Good Guys and jeer the Bad Guys and feel that everything is working correctly. After a few moments reading the predictable posts on /. I have to wonder about a few things.

My first thought is,"What competent net-admin leaves their mail proxies wide open?" Then I happened across a post from a fellow who claimed that he was one of the victims of the spammers. The post indicated that the spammers had targeted spam-filters and anti-virus software running on his system to relay their material. Has he reported the vulnerabilities in this software? Is there a legitimate case for fraud against anti-virus and anti-spam software producers if their products open up just as many vulnerabilities as they fix? I'm not suggesting that we start feeding the lawyers like we feed trolls but perhaps, rather than laying off thousands of workers, upper management should start taking a more critical approach to the FUD they believe and the software that they buy to soothe their conscience while they're on the golf course.

Next I have to wonder about the 10,000 complaints received by the FTC. I find it hard to believe that most of the complaints were sent by private citizens. I don't know anyone that makes a practice out of e-mailing the FTC every time they receive an unwanted piece of mail. They're either hooked by the scam or they delete the spam. Some of the less educated will click the "remove me" link but I think most of us have learned better than to do that. The same fellow that claimed that he was part of one of the helplessly victimized corporations claimed that he had been sending some of the complaints to the FTC. If he was competent enough to track the spam and send complaints why could he have not simply closed the security holes in his system? Maybe there's no law defining it but this situation seems awfully similar to entrapment--the kind that catches a 12-year old that thinks they're getting away with the cookie jar.

Finally I have to wonder about the FTC and the types of spam you receive. I have a number of e-mail addresses and only one of them receives any spam on a regular basis. It's on hotmail and I've used it for more than seven years. That e-mail address saw my foolish college years and made its way to every mailing list possible when drinking commenced the Friday after final exams or in the extreme boredom of poverty embellished vacation time. Even after making it through those years, my hotmail address receives no kiddie porn, no animal porn, only select adult porn, and mostly just advertisements for home mortgages, debt reduction, escorts, or herbal medicines for weight loss or physical enhancement. So the question is: What mailing lists have people been getting involved in where they're plagued by all of the ultra-filthy, ultra-evil spam? Could the FTC use spam complaints as a method of profiling the alleged spam victim? It would be easy enough to correlate the type of spam that you receive with the places that you frequent on the 'net. Getting people hooked on finching on their neighbor may help them land themselves under surveillance or in hot water. While this is a Good Thing if we feel morally righteous enough to police each citizen as a potential criminal it doesn't help society as a whole to become a paranoid, frightened, distrustful police state. Well, maybe it helps some people. It helps to own the jail contract, the surveillance contract, or be the head of the Clerk of Court office.

While I'm glad to see that something is being done about spam it seems to me that the real solution to the problem lies not in catching the spam senders but rather in reforming the systems which aid them such as fraudulent or excessively marketed "catch-all" security programs, default holes in MS operating systems, less than qualified network administrators that leave their mail proxy open, and opportunistic federal agents that don't act until people band together to bait some dumb sucker and drop him in the lap of the prosecutor.

Re:Making the net safe for corporations that spam.

[sootman]

Here are 20 of the 194 spams I've gotten on ONE ACCOUNT since I last cleaned that mailbox 4 DAYS ago:

Ivan Carmichael; Visit our Internet pharmacy, b...
Tammi Vincent; ""get pro.tection incase of =?...
Wyatt Staton; bellyfull contribution father ...
Wyatt Staton; bellyfull contribution father ...
Wyatt Staton; bellyfull contribution father ...
Wyatt Staton; bellyfull contribution father ...
Sharon Darnell; Check it out
Sharon Darnell; Check it out
Sharon Darnell; Check it out
Sharon Darnell; Check it out
Tropes H. Listed; Design, best meds
Peggy Velazquez; albanian presumptuous dalhousi...
Stefanie Bowden; alex curry mitt nullstellensat...
Stefanie Bowden; alex curry mitt nullstellensat...
Peggy Velazquez; albanian presumptuous dalhousi...
Stefanie Bowden; alex curry mitt nullstellensat...
Peggy Velazquez; albanian presumptuous dalhousi...
Stefanie Bowden; alex curry mitt nullstellensat...
Peggy Velazquez; albanian presumptuous dalhousi...
Wilma Franks; Visit our Internet pharmacy, b...

See anything in there from Dell? GE? MS? No. I registered my Pavilion with HP when I bought it and I get, like, 1 message from them every 3 months. Myabe one message every 2 months from my ISP and my cell phone provider. Legitimate businesses are NOT the problem.

3 spams=3 lawsuits=3 strikes???

[Freeman-Jo]

Well, if the person send out bulk e-mail, under 3 different subject name, therefore broken 3 laws, and strike out?

I think it should be.

Typical Penalties

[Ra5pu7in]

Okay, it looks like the offense has possible penalties of a fine and limited jail time. Based on the average spammer, the maximum imprisonment time would be 3 years for the first offense and 5 years for subsequent convictions. What I find more likely to have an impact is forfeiture. The convicted spammer will be ordered to forfeit any property traceable to proceeds from their spamming and any equipment, software or technology used therein. This is much more likely to have an impact than the fine and imprisonment, IF it is applied fully.

WANTED - James Lin and Daniel J. Lin

[Animats]

The FTC press release is more informative than the Department of Justice press release. (The CNN story is basically the DOJ press release.) The DOJ press release says "The Lins have not been arrested at this time." The FTC is more explicit. They're wanted.

• Arrest warrants are outstanding for defendants James Lin and Daniel J. Lin. In a criminal complaint issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office, these individuals have been charged with violations of the federal mail fraud laws as well as with criminal violations of the CAN-SPAM Act.

So if you know the whereabouts of those spammers, please contact the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

The FTC also credits Spamhaus in assisting with the investigation.