Massachusetts Drops Hammer on Spam Gang

karvind writes "According to story on BBC and Yahoo, the Massachusetts attorney general has filed a lawsuit against one of the world's biggest spam gangs. An emergency court order granted under the suit should see the network of websites the spammers ran shut down. Attorney General Thomas Reilly's civil complaint against alleged ringleader Leo Kuvayev and six other people associated with 2K Services Ltd. and Ecash Pay Ltd. Offered for sale on the websites were pornography, pills, pirated software and fake fancy watches."

Comments

So who will win the PR war

[peragrin]

New York's Attoreny General

or

Massachusetts attorney general?

Both are making huge names for themselves by fighting the fights no one else wants to touch.

Re:So who will win the PR war

[vandon]

This really isn't going to do anything. Spam sites get shut down all the time and spammers have other servers lined up to move to at a moments notice. They're probably back up and operating at a new site already.

Re:So who will win the PR war

[suwain_2]

I don't know about in New York, but it's been speculated that Reilly's going to run for governor of Massachusetts in the next election.

Something like this might look really good in a campaign.

No joke

[superpulpsicle]

My spam count has gone from "insane" to "alot". I guess we haven't arrested enough.

Related info

[Virtual Karma]

The "Internet Spam Gang," as investigators called the group, is considered to be one of the world's largest spam operations and has sent millions of unsolicited e-mail messages for items like pirated software and counterfeit drugs. The gang is comprised of seven individuals and allegedly headed by Leo Kuvayev, who lives in Newton, a Boston suburb.

As reported by www.cio-today.com

Re:Related info

[Reliant-1864]

The home in Mas. is his mother's address. In 2001, when I knew Leo, he had an apartment and an office in Montreal, Canada. His main partner at the time had already been deported to Russia. The guy will do anything for money, including.

That partner dealt heavily in trafficking of Child Pornography, and while I was working at 2k Services, even considered doing it through the office (I didn't find out about that until after I'd quit).

He also runs online casinos with his own software that's got quite a record on Casino Meister

His partner runs top100.org (including all the other domains on the same software) which is where a lot of child pornography gets trafficked.

I used to work for Leo Kuvayev at 2k Services/ECash Services. I am grateful I quit years ago to move onto better jobs. I hope he and his partners end up behind bars. They have no ethics.

Re:Related info

[Sentry21]

Some more related info, for those who are interested.

I used to work for Leo, but I got out before things went from bad to worse. Other coworkers and friends, as well as my roommate, weren't so lucky.

Aside from the flash designers that he was paying under the table and the animal pornography and child pornography that he's gotten into distributing (the story didn't mention that though, I guess it's unrelated), he was just a really shady character. He was good friends with Alan Ralsky (who, at one point, both had and used my roommate's cellphone number several times), and he was all for doing whatever he could to make money. Truly, to those who believe in the capitalist ideal, he was an icon for all.

Leo is a Russia-born American citizen; the address in Mass. is his mother's address, but Leo has relocated to Russia (the article says he might be, but I can confirm this). Aside from the big screw-ups that the article mentions, he's also done such wonderful things as trying to dock people's pay so their salaries match other employees, and he fired me because the secretary, with whom he was having an affair, told him that I'd said I was going to quit (which I didn't).

I don't feel so bad now that I 'worked' for him for a few months, fudged my hours upwards by around 50-70%, and then went on vacation after I'd made a few grand off of him. Oh well.

Good

[DeepCerulean]

It's nice to see some spammers getting sued rather than some 12 year old girl who downloads MP3s...

Go after the root cause

[kjfitz]

This is nice but as long as there is money to made sending spam there will be plenty of border-line companies jumping into the gap to replace others taken down. This isn't going to end until we go after the companies selling their products through the spammers.

Re:Go after the root cause

[Jarnis]

Yes, but constant busts will increase the cost of spending spam.

Only way to get rid of it, is to make it unprofitably expensive due to constant downage of servers & evasion of lawsuits being bombarded at you.

Right now it's considered 'jaywalking', and therefore easy money. Once people start getting tossed into the can for it. For real. In numbers... THEN things may slowly start to change...

How does spam STILL work??

[alecks]

I am still baffeld at how and why SPAM still works?!?! Everyone i know complains about spam, even the most non-technical people... Yet, apparently, some of them still go and buy stuff...

I'd be very curious to see some figures on how much money was spent on spam-started purchases last year....

Re:How does spam STILL work??

[TomTraynor]

The economics of it makes it worth their while. It costs very little to send out millions of messages. All they need is a few suckers to buy their product and they have already profited. For the software it does not cost much to buy CDs (I can buy them for about 35 cents/CD0 and the cost of the mailing. If they go via FTP for software delivery the cost is still lower.

The spammers are playing on either ignorance or greed and it works.

To get it to stop may well be impossible, but, we can do our bit to make the spammers life difficult. I do my part by having a homepage that friends and family can access to read about the latest scams/spams and I always try to educate people about why they should buy from legit local businesses.

Gang... :)

[mreed911]

"Internet Spam Gang"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! What's their hand sign? Do they go around flashing their USB drive covers to each other to represent their set? Do they have license plates with their IP subnets? Yeah, boyee!

Re:They have been shutdown pending the outcome...

[Linker3000]

In this day and age, if you open an email from someone you don't know and see links and you click them you are not unwittingly doing anything. You are just a nitwit.

Yep - but if you're 'on the road' or even on a pay per minute dial-up connection then receiving this crap costs you money even if you just initially download the headers.

Drops what, a tiny plastic hammer?

[Kainaw]

FTA: So far no formal charges have been filed against Mr Kuvayev and his colleagues who are thought to be behind the two companies, 2K Services Ltd and Ecash Pay Ltd, that sent all the spam.

So, what did they do? They filed a restraining order to have the websites shut down. A RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST A WEBSITE!?!?!?

FTA: Two phone numbers for Kuvayev and 2K Services in Canada were disconnected

So, he disconnected his phones and moved. How long until he sets up shop again?

now if only the Mass Attorney General

[Richthofen80]

would file charges against the Big Dig Contractors, as well as the shitty state management, and the Mass Turnpike authority.

While geeks are probably going to herald this as a great thing, a more cursory review might reveal this to be an easier way of filling the state's coffers, through lawsuits.

A similar example might be how Tobacco Companies were sued and now provide a great deal of revenue to the states.

Re:They have been shutdown pending the outcome...

[no haters]

Good Lord, who crapped in your cheerios this morning? A couple notes to your tirade:

1) Counterfeit versions of prescription drugs != drugs from Canada; that should be fairly obvious.

2) Clicking on a link that says it will take you to one thing, then takes you to another is most certainly doing something "unwittingly". Whether or not that person is a nitwit is irrelevant.

3) I would absolutely classify shutting down a spam gangs ring of websites as "bringing the hammer down". They are no longer operational, and are in court. The only thing left to do is to convict them and make them pay monetary damages.

Sheesh, mellow out, you should be happy you might actually start getting less spam.

When is the fight coming to Florida?

[BronxBomber]

Boca Raton, FL (which is near where I'm from) has been unofficially crowned king of spam.

Given the area's high retiree population, this doesnt surprise me. After all, they can pick up their V1agra and c1alis practically right around the corner once the email hits their account!

Read more about it at the Sun Sentinel.

Between tracking sex offenders, fighting for Terri Schiavo, and getting slot machines taxed, theres little room for this on the legislative agenda.

Economic Analysis

[Veinor]

Suppose that the cost of stopping a spam e-mail at the source can be quantified, and same for the benefit for doing same (a stretch, but it's necessary for the following discussion). Then, society will stop spam e-mails as long as the cost of stopping the nth, (its Marginal Cost, or MC) is less than or equal to the benefit for stopping it (its Marginal Benefit, or MB).
The MB is relatively low for stopping just one e-mail, since many filters stop these anyway. The MC, on the other hand, is relatively high, as we have seen. Therefore, the MC will catch up to the MB very fast, and very little spam will be stopped.

clueless local media outlets

[notnAP]

As a Mass. resident, I'm thoroughly amused by the local media outlets... I've heard from both WBZ radio and WCVB TV News the story with a lead in saying something like...

"If you live in Massachusetts, you'll be happy to hear you'll be getting less spam now that..."

I'd be curious to see exactly how much spam from these guys was destined to Massachusetts people. Oh hell, don't bother. Borders are so... 1900's...

Peter

I know people who buy things from Spam

[doublem]

I disagree. I knew a couple of people at my former job who actually bought things that were sent to them as SPAM. One coworker bought a "Digital Camera" that had no LCD and about 2 megs of internal RAM. The software for manging the thing was full of spyware. Without the software you couldn't get pictures off it, and without the spyware, the camera management software ceased functioning, so he decided to leave the malware on his work computer. The Network Admin actually got a dressing down from the company's owner for uninstalling the spyware and thus "Breaking Dick's camera" in the process.

I tried to talk to the guy about buying things from Spam. He and the other staffer who bought junk like that compared it to buying things from mail order catalogs. "We can't stop those either, and they're harder to get rid of then just hitting the 'delete' button."

When A----- said, "If it was a scam the police would shut them down" followed by a glare that made it clear she thought I was an idiot.

A----- later had problems with a credit card number being stolen. I asked her if it was the same card she'd used to buy the camera. I was treated to a 15 minute tirade insisting I was paranoid.

People buy things from Spam, and have no problems with doing so.

Re:I know people who buy things from Spam

[Vellmont]

I can believe it. There's a lot of very stupid, very naive people in the world who are also very insistent that they're right.

It's hard to argue with these kind of people, mostly because they've developed some kind of reality filter that doesn't let through anything that questions their beliefs. I've always assumed that without the filter, their psyche would collapse under the weight of the truth. You can try to pick away at the filter, but if you suceed they'll only become enraged at your for exposing the truth (and revealing to them their own filter, which they like to ignore).

Re:Nice!

[Marko DeBeeste]

MIT uses the death penality only in those cases related to CalTech.

Its not just the spammers

[Zaai]

Lets not forget why there are spammers. Spam exists because there are advertisers and because we make it work.

What else could help to deterr spam?

Legislation could be more effective if advertising through spamming was also illegal.

Also, if we, the end users, would more easily see what companies are advertising through spam than that would hurt the company's image and be a deterrent. An idea for a browser plugin maybe?

Also adding to effectiveness would be to block sites of advertisers that are on the spammers list. For example, a firefox plugin could automatically check if url's are spam url's and hide the URL and the sites, if the user chooses to.

We need more than just legislation against spamming, the driving source of spam are the advertisers!

RICO prosecutions are what's needed

[swb]

Since this basically is an "organized" crime, what's needed is a RICO investigation. RICO (Racketeer-influenced and Corrupt Organizations act) is a special law crafted to fight organized crime. Essentially anyone knowingly involved in a criminal organization or providing it with support can face a shit load of jail time.

One thing spammers DO need are hosting companies, internet service, a certain amount of banking services, and so on. The people providing them with these services need to be investigated as part of a RICO investigation. That alone will have a chilling effect, and there has to be a few prosecutions possible.

Seeing THOSE guys guy down will do a lot to increase the risk of even doing otherwise "legitimate" business with a spammer, and thus the costs will rise even higher to the point where spam will not be profitable.

Stopping people from spamming is impossible; cutting off their air supply isn't. The money goes someplace, and anyone getting a cut needs to start reviewing the glossy brochures for Federal Penetenieries.

Re:They have been shutdown pending the outcome...

[donarb]

Impossible. If you run a server, you get spam. You may filter it out before it hits your inbox, but it still travels down the wire to your box. You should care, spam anywhere costs EVERYBODY.

Re:They have been shutdown pending the outcome...

[Schemat1c]

And I will state again, anyone who clicks a link in any email that came from some unknown original is a fucking nitwit -- regardless of what it claims to be.

The general public is not as educated on the subject as you are. What about some elderly person who just got a computer as a present so that their grandkids can send email. Are they a nitwit because they click on a link that says cheaper prescriptions?

These spammers are predators and this action is a good thing. Just because you are too 'smart' to be fooled by these people doesn't make everyone else a nitwit. Self-righteous geeks really bother me. Remember, it's because most people aren't computer literate or even want to be that keeps us geeks working.