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Another Major Spammer Busted
Iphtashu Fitz writes "25 year old Christopher William Smith, considered one of the worlds biggest spammers by the Spamhaus Project, is now sitting in a jail without bond. Smith allegedly had a doctor issue 72,000 prescriptions in the space of one year in conjunction with orders obtained through spamming. The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's. Federal authorities have already seized over $3 million in cash, luxury cars, and houses."
As much as I approve of crimes like this... I just don't get why they don't know when to stop.
If you've made 3 million... walk away with what ya have. It's not worth pursuing another 3 million to risk losing it ALL.
Greed.
Ah well, no respect to dumb greedy criminals.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Is smack every one of the 72000 people who bought perscriptions from this guy. I don't think we'll ever really get rid of spammers until it's not profitable for them anymore. The best way to do that is to not buy anything from them.
Are most spammers spamming for their own business like this guy did
I was under the impression that most of the spammers were "for hire" by marketing firms, companies, mafias, etc.
How does that work? I've only ever had prescriptions that were hand written out by the doctor.
Usually,the doctor (or his office) can call or fax the pharmacy the prescription.
Although in this case, it seems like a bit of the old illegality....
This case also proves a bit of regulatory ineptness, I mean, doctors and pharmacies are highly regulated, how could they miss this guy writing this many prescriptions for so long?
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Burn, you son-of-a-b*tch.
Prescription drug abuse/diversion is a major problem... I get hit with drug seekers in my ER every single day. Some of these people have legitimate chronic pain conditions and need to be under the care of a pain specialist, while others are simply using narcotics to treat their psychological pain (or just gathering "party supplies" for the weekend). Some of these people self-medicate and push their vicodin/lortab dose until they get acetaminophen toxic... bad way to end up on the liver transplant list.
And before somebody says it, no, I don't think drug legalization is the answer.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Print adds in my mailbox are 100 times worse than electronic spam... At least the only resources being pissed away by e-spam are electricity, network bandwidth, and time.
Snail Spam wastes trees, oil, electricity, & time and ultimately only serves to keep the postal service in business and keeping landfills a growth market. I somehow manage to recieve 5 times more physical spam than electronic spam in my personal mailboxes.
I hate both, but if I had to choose which one to erradicate, it would be the physical variety.
And the corrolary from that is that how on *earth* did the doctor think he'd get away with that? The DEA has systems that track that kind of thing, and they're *very* public in letting doctors know about it. Supposedly the DEA monitors annual prescription rates of proscribed medications (pain meds, mostly) . I guess they saw the massive uptick in prescriptions by this doctor and called the goon squad.
But again, how on *earth* did the doctor think he could get away with that?
-EvilMagnus
Several bits of news here that shocked me:
72,000 people out there actually put pills in their bodies which came from a spammer who spells it "V1Ag ra!!!"
There was an actual doctor writing precriptions for these drugs, not just some sleazy smuggler from bolivia or some nutjob with a lab for making counterfeit placebo replacements.
The bastards are actually got caught at all, and did not turn out to be some distant Russian or Maylaysian hackers far beyond the reach of our law enforcement systems, but rather were a pair of US citizens dumb enough to think they could get away with it.
This is terrific news. Hoist a beer to your friendly neighborhood cyber-cop tonight, folks. It's not often the spooks get to be universally seen as the Good Guys.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It's the illegal prescriptions.
He sold $20,000,000 of hydrocodone in less than a year. I think the bigger question is how the hell he could sell that much of a tightly controlled narcotic before getting busted.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
And yet, the drug maker that supplied all these over priced pills to a single doctor in such a short time gets what? Fined? Prosecuted? No, they get richer! I love the US medical industry.
"What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter."
Think about it. You sell ED medicine and generic monoxydil products... or whatever.
Are you going to ask a lot of questions if a new customer comes along and starts providing you with millions of dollars worth of orders? Would you be inclided to view their decision to order all these drugs from your manufacturing plant as "suspicious" or "lucky"?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Considering that the average GP these days spends about 7 actual minutes with each patient, and in some cases prescribes more than one drug per visit, 27 scripts per hour is probably only slightly above the curve. I could easilly see this slipping under the radar if it wasn't for people hunting down the spammer he was working through.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It seems that the market is losing some of its biggest players. With the immense amount of money to be made spamming, now seems to be the best time to get into the business!
What is your penile percentile?
In May, a federal judge shut down Xpress Pharmacy and appointed a receiver to take control of the business' assets. Federal authorities seized $1.8 million in luxury cars, two homes and $1.3 million in cash.
Figures, they had to wait till it was profitable.
Now what are all those HydroCodine Junkies gonna do? Head straight to Crack and Crystal Meth. Ahhh, Justice.
The indictment contains various counts of conspiracy to dispense controlled substances, wire fraud, money laundering, distributing controlled substances and introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce.
I'm all for prison-raping the spammers, but if they don't charge him with any spam offenses, then we're all jumping on the War on Drugs Bandwagon. Count me out.
Make it a crime to repeatedly use my computer equipment for unsolicited Advertisements. Fine them at an advertiser rates. 5 cents a email. Charge him with this crime & let the bunkmates line up.
The doctor faces what charges?
The U.S. Attorney's Office said Mach was represented by Bruce Levy of New Jersey. A call to his office was not immediately returned Wednesday.
Oh.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
It never ceases to amaze me that people (users) continue to do business this way.
People wonder why the spamming never ends, it's because 72,000 perscriptions were bought through an email ad.
Spamming really does work, it's cheap, and highly effective as evidenced by the above numbers.
Nod, try greylisting, that helps a ton too. Most spammers don't use real mail servers that comply with the rfc's... so generally if you missed the mail on the first run you're not going to get it.
There was an excellent piece on slashdot a while back about spamfiltering... infact here's a link to it: http://acme.com/mail_filtering/ killer stuff there on prevention. He gets a level of spam that would put me outta my mind.
Shadus
Actually it does. The big drops happened earlier this year, but every time there is an arrest it seems there's a dip, as if all the spammers have taken notice and are limiting their visibility, until they feel the threat to them has passed, or they determine to take their profits and quit while ahead.
I have no doubt that it'll pick right up again, within the next ten days.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Back during Prohibition, a number of gangsters were sent to prison for tax evasion. The Feds couldn't get any evidence about the really bad things like extortion, robbery and murder, so they used what they could get. This is just more of the same thing, and a great idea. Professional spammers are likely to be breaking a number of laws, so investigate them and charge them with whatever you can find. Selling drugs, tax evasion, fraud, whatever.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
They should fine each person who answers illegal ads, too. If a spammer sends out 1,000,000 junk mails for almost no cost and one ass clown answers, it makes it worth his trouble. It's like prostitution or drug dealing: both buyer and seller should be busted.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I'm annoyed that 72,000 dipsticks responded to his spams.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Exactly. What I alluded to was the action of his actual arrest causing a dip in activity of other spammers, rather like everyone runs onto the beach when a shark attacks, never mind they are well aware that sharks are in the water at all times.
This was clarified in a reply to one of the above posts.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar