Russia's Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered

Karellen !-P writes "Vardan Kushnir, a notorious russian spammer who headed the English learning centers, the Center for American English, the New York English Centre and the Centre for Spoken English, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head."

Comments

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[AKAImBatman]

Pretty much nobody does business there of any sort, let alone shady stuff like hacking and spamming, without having connections to the mob.

That's not quite true. The Russian culture is certainly full of corruption given that the KGB effectively became the Mafia, but Moscow has become a booming city ripe with economic opportunity. New freeways, inexpensive cars, waterparks, big businesses (Sun's Russian HQ is right across the street from my father-in-law!), and Aerospace technologies are just a few areas where Moscow has been booming. Another big area is restaurant chains. There are now more international food chains in Russia than ever before!

Russia is something of a third world country that's pulling itself back up into an economic power. Along the way there will be TONS of greed and corruption, but don't confuse that with the honest growth that is occurring. :-)

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Daniel_Staal]

Um, Russia should be the *definition* of a second world country... First world was (roughly) the NATO group, Second world was (roughly) Warsaw Pact, Third world was everybody else.

Just being unbearably pendantic.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[ilyaaohell]

Wrong. The cyrillic letter for 'H' is 'X'. In any case, how is this a measure of wealth for a country to have foreign chain stores? I LIVED in the Soviet Union. I remember when the first McDonald's was built. A hamburger cost a month's salary, and the only reason there was a long line several hundred people in length is because the Russian people were so supressed that they desperately earned to try something they only read about or seen on TV. Coincidentally, I bet you'd find it "progress" if I told you that the cost of the hamburger since then has gone down from a month's sallary to a week's sallary. Sure, there are a handful of millionaires here and there, the vast majority of whom earned their wealth by "stealing" the property and industries that the government abandoned after instituting a more free market. But for the VAST majority of Russians, which I'm assuming is something like 98% of the population, none of these "cheap" chain stores are any more affordable to them than a night at the Opera is to you.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[bhtooefr]

Just for those of you who are seriously considering this, read this from that page:

The Specious Report ~

Spreading Rumors, Half-Truths & Misinformation Since 1789

Don't take it seriously. It's quite funny, but it's not our fault if you kill a spammer and get convicted of murder.

(Not that it shouldn't be done, of course ;-))

Russian Spammer murders in New Jersey

[billstewart]

A few years ago, a couple of Russian immigrants were found murdered in New Jersey. They were apparently spammers involved in a pump&dump stock scam. I don't think the crime was ever solved, but it was generally believed to be a Mafia deal (not sure if Russian Mafia or New York Traditional Mafia) by some investors who got burned.