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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.'"
Sadly, I doubt this will make any difference - they'll just forge more headers.
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.
Aw, who am I kidding. Prosecuting people has never been a deterent to the crime.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
"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.
je suis parce que j'aime
Now we just need four convicted.
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.
e w. html
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/1030_n
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
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.
toresbe
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
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.
I guess they're wondering if the criminal charges have an 'opt-out' list....
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Who will be the first to blame the owners of said unprotected relays for our spam woes, as opposed to the spammers themselves?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
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.
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...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
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.
"Capital punishment makes the state into a murderer. Imprisonment makes the state into a gay dungeon-master"
First Four People Charged Under CAN-SPAM Act
You're giving the spammers too much credit.
Here's an article from the tech writer at the Detroit Free Press. He focuses more on the big companies whose relays were abused.
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WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
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!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Sweet!
As long as they don't have to send everyone an apology...
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.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
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:
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."
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
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.'"
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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.
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Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
{ - Generic Guy - }
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.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
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??
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.
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...
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