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

That shouldn't happen.

[FFFish]

It's terrible that something like that would happen. It isn't legal and it isn't moral.

On the other hand, this message is about all the empathy and concern I can work myself up to. Good riddance to bad trash.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[william_w_bush]

yeah I'm there too, torn between poor guy and hooray.

so i suppose my comment on this is:

huh.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[ucahg]

Are you joking?

Has human life lost all sanctity, that you think it is justifiable to end a man's life because he sends you unwanted email?

Is spam that much of an annoyance to you that you are filled with satisfaction when a man is bludgeoned to death, only because that man was a spammer?

I'm at a loss for words, and I'm ashamed of the morality of the age I live in. You make me sick.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Golias]

Russia is currently one of the most "bent" countries in the world. Pretty much nobody does business there of any sort, let alone shady stuff like hacking and spamming, without having connections to the mob.

Keep that in mind next time somebody tells you what a great deal allofmp3.com is. The cost is actually a few pennies a song plus some poor sap's kneecaps somewhere.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[spiffy_dude]

Despite the levels of annoyance that people like this engender, celebrating a death is not ok. On the one hand you have a low level of constant annoyance (spam) and on the other hand you have someone's well-being (his DEATH). I think some priorities need to be examined.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Elwood P Dowd]

Is spam that much of an annoyance to you that you are filled with satisfaction when a man is bludgeoned to death, only because that man was a spammer?

This person has made a living by harming other people. He has done so for a long time. He would have been delighted to continue harming people for the rest of his life. Murder is clearly a disproportional response but you shouldn't be surprised when people are happy to see a sociopath take it worse than he was giving out.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Kadin2048]

No, this is Slashdot, where chances are the people who actually have to write and fine-tune and otherwise spend their day dealing with those filters hang out.

Sure, the majority of people here probably could just turn their filters on, but don't act like the technology to block annoying behavior like the spammers' just falls from the sky. Someone has to make it, and that's their time that the spammer is taking up.

There are a lot of people with legitimate grievances about unwanted bulk email, some greater than others. But when you get a lot of people together who each have a small grievance...it's probably not enough to cause any of them to actually go out and kill the person responsible, but don't expect them to act all sad about it when somebody else (assumedly for their own, probably nefarious reasons) does.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[drdewm]

Except that they actively work around my filters knowingly and aggresively with the mispellings, fake descriptions and ip spoofing nonsense. Anyone who knowingly pesters people on the milions and millions scale has forfeited any sympathy from me.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[mkirsten]

It isn't legal and it isn't moral. Neither is spamming.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[AKAImBatman]

The cyrillic letter for 'H' is 'X'.

That's actually a "Khah" sound (e.g. loch ness), not a hard 'H' sound.

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 [y]earned to try something they only read about or seen on TV.

Ehh... that's somewhat true. McDonalds was simply something new and cool at the time. A bit like when the Apple Store opened here in Chicago. Were people lined up at the Apple Store because they were oppressed? Me thinks it had more to do with the Apple Store being new and cool.

It was the same thing with McDonalds. After it existed for a while, it became a much more normal part of Russian life.

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.

I think you're a little behind on the times. Several years ago, the Russian government reissued new currency that has a much better parity when compared to the Dollar. Eating at McDonalds isn't cheap, but it doesn't cost a weeks salary, either.

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.

1. These are generally called "New Russians".

2. Many New Russians obtained their wealth through perfectly honest means. For example, a friend of my wife's family made a killing by starting a door repair/replacement business. Not something you'd think would be a big money-maker, but apparently he became quite weathly from it. Which just goes to show how important property is to Russians now that it's private instead of public.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[caluml]

I also went to a Subway in Saint-Petersburg on Nevsky Prospect; there are definitely a lot of american fastfoods in Russia nowadays. One of the few places where some of the cashiers speak english actually -- which made us prefer the aventure of typical russian restaurants with no ways to communicate with the waitress.

Why? Why go to the same food places as you go to in your home country? Why talk in the same language? Try and learn a few words of Russian before you go. I don't understand people that want to go abroad, and yet be at home.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[xmorg]

There is no more helpless a fealing than an email user who cant reply to an automated spam message, to tell the sender to get a life, or stop sending the message.

How many times have I wanted to find the guy who does this, and (At the very least) flood his inbox(s) with all the mail he has ever sent me. Killing is wrong yes, but you can't expect to tick off millions of people all over the world, and not suffer some retibution if discovered ... in short spamming could be hazerdous to your health!

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Cromac]

Killing is wrong yes, but you can't expect to tick off millions of people all over the world, and not suffer some retibution if discovered

If only the spammers would read that and realize the truth of it. I'm sure many of them think what they're doing is harmless and no one could possibly be bothered by it, but as you pointed out when you irritate millions of people chances are at least a few of them we be complete raving psychos.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[gothfox]

1. I'm not Russian. My wife is. :-)

Well, it's the same in my book, so I more or less guessed right. ;-)

2. That's a bit more extreme than I was trying to communicate.

I know. I commented on grandparent poster's take on my country's internal affairs which usually gets modded up to eleven by same thinking moderators. I read a lot of this post-apocalyptic nonsence here, basically in every thread about Russia, cracks me up every time.

Besides, what other country allows its Presidential candidates to be kidnapped? (Or perhaps allows it's candidates to spin believable stories about kidnapping. You decide.) ;-)

Heh. And what country allows its military-industrial complex to buy out the president elections and generally pwn the public as it pleases?

I think, it's the same shit everywhere, only the level of general, um, civility differs. We lag for about fifty-sixty years, so our bandits are more rough. Bandits of "first world" countries are more civilized, but the principle stays the same.

Unbelievable!

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I can't believe he's the only one.

You know what they say...

[Linus Torvaalds]

Karma's a bitch.

I'm sure there will be plenty of people thinking that somebody got a little too pissed off with spam, but try and remember that these types of spammers associate with organised crime (e.g. by hiring virus writers to get them bot nets).

Re:You know what they say...

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Knowing Russia and Russians, and I do, he probably got his head bashed in after a drunken argument over someones wife, all generally misinterpreted, with the "injured party" sneaking back afterwards with his friends to do the deed. Russia is a squalid, rotten, barbarous country, where extraordinary levels of physical violence are the accepted norm, and you had better know Russian if you go there, tavaresh, because random passers by will beat you if you don't.

The spamming was probably just incidental.

Re:You know what they say...

[ear1grey]

Karma's a bitch.

This is retribution and murder, not justice: it has no place in the society that most spam recipients want to enjoy and has fuck all to do with Karma.

This is one less person that can have his day in court, so there will be no legal precidents formed by judgements on any of his actions. The slow legal process against spammers was just hindered, not helped.

Because of spamming?

[Tal Cohen]

The post (and the first few replies) seem to assume that he was murdered since he was a spammer. Somehow, I doubt that.

Re:Because of spamming?

[Martin Blank]

My first thought was that he might have been killed because he was a spammer not sharing his profits with the right people. The various Russian mobs are very powerful, very greedy, and very territorial.

Why must we be animals?

[mind21_98]

Violence against anyone is wrong, unless it's in self-defense. I don't think he was killed because he was a spammer--he was probably killed in a robbery or confrontation over some other reason. We'll have to wait until the police find out more about what happened.

Re:Why must we be animals?

[Evil Adrian]

Violence against anyone is wrong, unless it's in self-defense.

Is it OK to use violence to defend someone else? Like if you see a rape being committed?

How about in a sanctioned boxing match?

Re:Why must we be animals?

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Considering the tight connection between spammers, hackers, and the notoriously violent Russian crime gangs, I don't think this was a robbery. He wasn't killed for spamming, but his spamming is how he met whoever killed him.

Re:Why must we be animals?

[sowellfan]

I'm all for stopping the people that send spam, and spread spyware, trojans, viruses, etc., through legal means.

Unfortunately, legal means aren't doing much to solve the problem that we're facing (increasing identify theft, credit card fraud, computers that have to be re-imaged to start working again, etc.). In fact, even while more and more people work on security issues from the defense side, the epidemic spread of malicious programs continues. When the people that do this stuff operate in the U.S., they're hard to catch, and hard to prosecute. When they're operating in places like Russia, where the law is not in our favor, they are nearly impossible to prosecute effectively through legal means.

If legal means are completely ineffective at creating a deterrent, as they seem to be, then vigilante action becomes a more viable option, IMHO. Granted, the corpse in this story appears to have been a spammer, not an organized-crime trojan writer. As such, I think murder was not warranted. But for the people who *are* writing and spreading trojans, defrauding people, etc., I think that the only true deterrent would be the murder of a significant number of them (enough to get their attention and make them re-think their career choice).

If you think I'm going far here, just think about this: How many man-hours are spent here in the U.S. each year dealing with security issues caused by scum like this? Millions, I'm sure. Each hour spent dealing with these problems is an hour that is effectively stolen from the person who has to deal with that problem - if the problem didn't exist, then they could be doing something of their own choice. So the people that perpetrate this stuff rob us of millions of hours of our lives, while they enjoy all of the hours of their lives. In the big balance sheet of life, we come out ahead if the perps are deceased.

Re:Why must we be animals?

[Monkelectric]

Shut your PC liberal trap please. I am a liberal, but not a pc liberal. And you are the kind of liberal that gives us liberals a bad name.

Violence is absolutely necessary. The fact that there is *NO* violence in our society is whats wrong with our society. In the hundreds of thousands of years before police, societies policed themselves. They did this with: violence. Anyone who did something wrong, would be beaten or killed by everyone else. There were direct consequences for your actions. Did people get beat up/killed for the wrong reasons? Sometimes yes. But on the whole things were safer.

In our society where the police have a monopoly on "justice", criminals are free to commit crimes that police don't have time to investigate: Burglaries, theft, etc etc. My house was broken into, a purse and car stolen, there was survaliance video of the theifs trying to use the stolen CC's in two places. We also know about where they live... yet the police didn't investigate, meanwhile these guys are causing a wave of burglaries in my area. And we know about where they live.

Yet, if a few homeowners and I were to go and kill them, we'd goto jail, because the police would investigate that crime.

Re:Why must we be animals?

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

>>Violence against anyone is wrong...

No, it's not.

Re:Why must we be animals?

[rbarreira]

At least he could have quoted the whole sentence instead of eliminating an important part of it...

Re:Why must we be animals?

[professionalfurryele]

I was simplifying for the purposes of arguement. I was in no way suggesting having a job made one an inherently more valuable human being. It does however add value to a human being.
I choose two extremes to illustrate my case, the hard working manual labourer and the career criminal.
As for not being able to feed oneself on Jobseekers allowance. When I was a littlen' My family did just that. So I know a thing or two about the opertunity of those less fortunate. Now it was very hard to got by on the dole, especially with us children about. But you can still eat. You cant have fun and your kids will be wearing crap clothes but you can survive.
As for this guy breaking into your house and you having the right to kill him for it. No you don't have the right to kill him. But if as a consequence of you protecting yourself and you family he dies should you have to face criminal proceedings? Unless you happen to be able to know just by looking at someone the force needed to knock them out without damage and can predict precisely how long it will take the police to arrive I think you are entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
In addition as a side note I don't know what the employment prospects of our criminal are but if he is so regularly unemployed that he cannot feed his family without turning to crime he shouldn't have kids.
Self defence should extend to intent not consequences. We cant all be expert in unarmed combat so that means sometimes the result of necessary physical engagement are unfortunate. But these acts should not be crimes.

1st 3 comments

[lilmouse]

The first three comments:

1. Shouldn't kill even spammers.
2. This happened b/c he was spamming.
3. Yeah! Kill the bastards!

That about sums up the comments...

FWIW, he was probably offed by a business partner who wanted a bigger cut of the profits, or by the mob, because he wasn't paying them off. This is Russia we're talking about here.

--LWM

Opt-out

[wowbagger]

It sounds to me like he simply failed to opt-out of the "Beat your head in" club.

They must have purchased a list with his name on it, and he failed to opt-out, so they had every right to offer their product to him.

After all, we wouldn't want to deny those people who WANT to have their heads beaten in the opportunity, just because some whiny anti-battery types want such lists to be double opt in.

He should have taken more care with his head - kept it in a metal helmet, only showing it to his friends, changing it periodically. Instead, he had his head out in the open where anybody who wanted to could beat it in.

It's all his fault, and the DMA (Dastardly Murder Association) bears no responsibility for this incident.

Spam

[william_w_bush]

how... sad...ish

my take on this is that we shouldn't blame spammers for spam, we should blame the MOTHER-FUCKING BRAIN-DEAD IDIOTS who actually BUY from them, giving them an economic incentive to fuck the rest of us over.

Honestly, if you know anyone who buys that shit, please kick his ass for us, they support spammers, and are more to blame than 100 whatever-this-guys-name-was.

Re:Spam

[Tim C]

how... sad...ish

The unnecessary death of a human being? Yeah, I'd say it's sad.

Re:Spam

[the pickle]

Unnecessary?

You presume his life was necessary in the first place. I'm gonna go with no. The overwhelmingly vast majority of people are utterly, indescribably insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

This guy was no different.

As another poster so adroitly pointed out, there are something like a quarter of a million people who die every single day in this world. Put in a time-averaged perspective, that's about three people every single second of the day. In the time it takes me to compose a sentence in this post, 30 or 40 people have died.

And you're going to try to say you feel sadness for each and every one of these people?

Bullshit.

I feel sadness for innocent people who die in terrorist attacks. I feel sadness for people who die after long bouts with cancer whilst their loved ones watch them waste away. I feel sorry for people who are murdered because they wore the wrong colour shirt in the wrong part of town.

I sure as shit do not feel one whit of sympathy or sadness for some professional asshat whose goal in life was to annoy the holy hell out of everyone on the Internet. Do you know how much Russian-language spam I've gotten this year? I don't speak or read a word of Russian, but I have to deal with this guy's drivel every goddamn day, and you want me to feel fucking sad because someone beat his worthless ass to death in his apartment?

How about I start shitting on your porch -- and the porch of everyone in your neighbourhood, village, town, city, and state -- every day for the next 10 years? When you and your 10 million friends get done cleaning it off after the 3650th day, and someone fucking snaps and beats me to death, I utterly DEMAND you feel remorse for my unnecessary death.

Never mind that my sole purpose and goal in life at that point was to piss you off. You had goddamn better feel remorse that you're not going to get your porch shit on tomorrow.

People like you are the reason people like him are allowed to continue existing.

And that, my friend, is truly sad.

p

Why would it be the mafia?

[elucido]

The mafia wouldnt beat a person to death, they'd simple make the person vanish off the face of the earth. You'd think the mafia would do a professional hit. Yes there is a russian mafia, but if this is the most profitable spammer in russia its simply illogical for them to kill their cashcow.

So yes you could be right, it could be someone in the spam network, but it could just as likely be someone who got tired of recieving the spam.

Re:Why would it be the mafia?

[Golias]

The mafia wouldnt beat a person to death, they'd simple make the person vanish off the face of the earth. You'd think the mafia would do a professional hit.

People are beat to death by mafia goons all the time.

The "single pistol shot through the eyeball" execution is the stuff of movies. Mob thugs are no better at crime than regular thugs, they just have infrastructure in place to make it easier.

Yes there is a russian mafia, but if this is the most profitable spammer in russia its simply illogical for them to kill their cashcow.

Now it's my turn to get all Hollywood:

"You're only as good as your last brown envelope."

Re:Why would it be the mafia?

[mikkom]

The mafia wouldnt beat a person to death, they'd simple make the person vanish off the face of the earth.

Really? I read about mafia killings in Russia quite often from newspapers and very often they are just people who have been shot to their home doors.

Where did you get the idea that mafia, especially russian mafia, only kills people after kidnapping them?

Re:Of course it isnt moral.

[DanielNS84]

I completely agree...my sister's boyfriend is in jail for 10 years because he got caught with some marijuana...meanwhile his cousin got like 4 years for hitting some guy drunk and killing him. Seems a little off.

I don't know how I feel about this.

[TWX]

I mean, I've wanted to see Spammers get their just desserts; I've dreamed about spammers being arrested and locked up in a cell with three guys who bought their Viagra and Enlargement Pills, but I've never really considered that something could really happen. I kind of feel like Vir, when his "I'd like to see your head up on a pike, so I can wave at it like this" moment. It's an anti-cathartic moment that I'll have to savor in its most violent decadence, yet sweet at the same time.

Just. Wow.

Well...

[abb3w]

..would it be irony or poetic justice?

Judging by the way my ceremonial can-o-Spam reacts to a magnet, I would say Irony.

Re:That shouldn't happen. Likely just new owners

[Herschel Cohen]

It's a game played by many "businesses", let someone develop the market then take it over by any means.

Your new spam might read like: "Read This, Buy or Die!" Where every word is meant to be taken in the literal sense.

9th century Icelandic law (Outlawry)

[crovira]

The problem is that you're assuming you'll get caught. "Doing what, officer? We've been here playing cards all evening"

The question is: Can you live with the consequences?

Re:9th century Icelandic law (Outlawry)

[Anonymous Coward]

As you misunderstand the social exchange involved I must simply state that yes, you must accept it. Your alternative advocates widespread vigilante murder; robbery, extortion, blackmail, and every other crime follow inexorably once murder becomes common and prosecution for it is reduced as a bit of murder can obstruct any investigations into any crime.

You missed one...

[makomk]

(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem

Re:Of course it isnt moral.

[DanielNS84]

My sister hasn't attended thanksgiving since she got hooked on meth 2 years ago, but I'm sure thanksgiving would be better with her there even if she brought her horrible boyfriend and his family.

Re:Spam mob?

[arbitraryaardvark]

The ALC website soon became a favorite target for hackers, and Russian Internet service providers frequently closed down his sites when users complained about the spamming practices.

Among those complaints came death threats; it is speculated that while many were from angered users, some may have come from the sort of loosely-organized anti-spam gangs described in the 2004 book Spam Kings.

And possibly, one followed through on the many deadly promises made over the years to Mr. Kushnir, in his Moscow apartment over the weekend.
I'm not up on moscow law. Is it legal to kill spammers there?
I'm not up on all US law. Is it legal to mail photos of Kushnir's body to US-based spammers?

Re:Three Cheers!

[anonicon]

"If I find your post sufficiently objectionable, should I be permitted to kill you too?"

Hmmm, a single post to Slashdot being compared to some professional asshat who spammed millions of people and mail servers around the world. Now THAT'S Slashdot for you.

As for the spammer, I gave you this abridged Clerks retort:
Blue-Collar Man: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about?
Randal: The ending of Return of the Jedi.
Dante: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
Blue-Collar Man: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer... (digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
Randal: Like when?
Blue-Collar Man: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.
Dante: Whose house was it?
Blue-Collar Man: Dominick Bambino's.
Randal: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?
Blue-Collar Man: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.
Dante: Based on personal politics.
Blue-Collar Man: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.
Randal: No way!
Blue-Collar Man: (paying for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.

The spammer should have listened to the roofer.

Re:Dying in tiny slices

[krasmussen]

Well, no matter what, this can't in any way justify this crime (I'm not sure if that's what you're trying to do?). It would still not do anything good in any way. As Mahatma Gandhi once said; "An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind"

Somewhere his mother is probably sobbing.

[Bahumat]

Fine, he was a spammer.

Somewhere he probably has a mother, still alive, who is sobbing over his grave. To her, he was her boy, her son, a part of her flesh and blood.

What would you tell her? "Tough shit, grandma. Your boy got offed over some spam."

Shame.

Re:Somewhere his mother is probably sobbing.

[Steve B]

Somewhere he probably has a mother, still alive, who is sobbing over his grave.

Why? Why didn't I do a better job? Why didn't I raise him to be a decent human being instead of a... a... SPAMMER?!?

Is it wrong to find these posts funny?

[swerk]

Man, I feel bad that I don't feel worse. Here we have someone who's died a violent death, and we're having quite a bit of fun joking about it.

Now obviously I don't think someone who spends his time choking thousands of servers and annoying millions of people should be given a medal, but I hope nobody here honestly believes that beating him to death would really be justified.

All the same, I'm finding all these morbid jokes to be pretty amusing. Perhaps I'm just a sick bastard. Or maybe those darn violent videogames have warped my mind and I can't tell fact from fiction anymore. What's that, violence doesn't matter anymore, it's sex in games that ruins people? Guess I'm behind the times. Probably though, it's just part of the human condition: it's not in our face, we know nothing redeeming and something damning about this person, and as a result we're far enough away that we can even joke about it.

I'm sure there's a good one to be made about him coming back as a "zombie" and continuing to spam, but I'm not sure how to put it together.

Re:It has to happen.

[10Ghz]

Sure, spammers cost billions in damage. Get over it! They're no different from any other class of criminal (or purveyor of immoral acts). Are we to rejoice in the slaying of every single immoral person?

Maybe we should. Seriously: this person demonstrated that he doesn't give a flying fuck about other people. His life was dedicated to harassing others. If he treats me (and others) like a dogshit he stepped on, why exactly should I weep when he meets his not-so-nice fate? If he wants to have (well, too late for that now!) my respect and sympathy, he must earn it. But if he spends his time harassing me through my inbox, don't be surprised if I don't have any sympathy for him.

He's dead. And good riddance. His positive contributions to the society and others were overshadowed by his selfish and harmful acts. The world is a better place now that he's gone. Yes, there are people on this planet who are nothing but waste of space and oxygen. And this man was one of them.

You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

I'm not, and I'm proud of it. And if you can't live with that fact, maybe you should take your holier-than-thou attitude and stick it up your ass.