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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."
Smith allegedly had a doctor issue 72,000 prescriptions in the space of one year
Which just goes to prove to be a really big drug dealer you need a computer and connections, not just to hang out in your Accura in McDonald's parking lot late at night.
* Nelson Muntz appears in this posting courtesy Twentieth Century Fox and Matt Groening.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Holy Crap! FTA: Prosecutors allege Smith had Mach issue about 72,000 prescriptions from July 2004 to about May 2005.
Now, I freely admit that I don't have a clue about how prescriptions are handled, but isn't 72,000 prescriptions just a little much? Would't someone have gotten a touch suspicious that this guy was writing them out at a rate of 1 prescription every 7 seconds? Or is there not enough infrastructure to be able to tell how many a doctor has written?
It obviously had to be done electronically (Or else he would have had to write an awful lot). How does that work? I've only ever had prescriptions that were hand written out by the doctor.
I guess I'm just amazed that it took them that long to realize something was wrong.
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
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.
...Am I missing something here? What else is a big no-no?
He was giving out prescriptions without a proper medical exam? That's not a good idea. But...wait...he was practicing medicine in New Jersey? How CRIMINAL!
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!!
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Another Major Spammer Busted
Who gave those in charge a clue? It seems we're starting to see a paradigm shift... people who really abuse network resources are getting caught!
FLR
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.
is using an apostrophe to make a plural. Maybe we can harness the awesome power of the spammers to send out remedial spelling emails?
PUTTING As IN DEFINITELY? Es IN RIDICULOUS? WE CAN HELP!
I guess my viagra and ciliax orders are going to be delayed.
Do you have ESP?
It's as if a thousand annoying voices screamed "C1ALIS" in unison, and were then silenced.
It's not butchered, it's creatively adjusted!
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
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.
- Crow T. Trollbot
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.
Too much vertical integration.
If he'd just stuck to the marketing side..
He'd still be living large...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he 1: provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States 2: without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no's.
Better?
Read TFA! They were NOT busted for spam! They were drug dealers, caught illegally selling narcotics. Spam was how they advertised, but they are getting NO punishment for it.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
"Hey, it;s bad enough down here!"
- Satan
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."
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.
Other than the naughty bit about paying his pet doctor $7 for each non-exam script, this was a stand-up guy. He did exactly what he claimed he would. How many so-called spammers out there can say that? This guy had _thousands_ of satisified, repeat customers. Nobody was getting ripped off, in fact I'd wager the majority of the scripts that were filled were cheaper to the customer than if they went to Walgreens/Target/whatever and had it filled. This guy SAVED the health industry millions and he's demonized for fraud. Fraud? In what way? How did he defraud customers? Didn't he supply them with exactly what they were ordering at a fraction of the usual cost? Spamming? How is he different than Ford or GM putting their commercials on every 6 minutes during your prime time show? --- It wouldn't take much to turn this guy into a modern day Robin Hood. You all act like he's satan incarnate, in reality it's nothing but a very successful businessman with an overly invasive advertising scheme (but no spyware or adware!) who gave his customers exactly what they wanted at a price both parties were happy with. How many other businesses can match that?
25 year old, hm... 3 million dollars worth of stuff is pretty nice at 25. The only problem is... when you go to hit on a girl... what do you say you do? SPAM? Hey baby... I'm a spammer. Wanna SPAM? You know baby, I could make a couple of calls and all that spam in your inbox would be gone?
HEY, there's an idea, do you think these people know how to protect THEMSELVES from SPAM???? WOA!! I'm a freakin genius. I'm sure this guy's girlfriend isn't getting Viagra adds, how do they do it? Maybe we can just use their methods against themselves.
I rock so hard.
My website gets around 30 hits a minute (from seperate IPs) with fake referrer spam for sites selling prescription drugs. Anything with a drug name in the referrer, Phentermine, Xanax etc, gets an http 302 redirect to dea.gov; the original referrer isn't replaced. Who knows, maybe no one there ever looks at the logs, but if they do there's a few sites they might be interested in.
He was busted for something else right? Something related to illegal drug activity, wire fraud, money laundering...? Stuff like that?
So far, all this does is make "illegal" activities proliferated by spam something that will get you busted....
Hrm... okay so this WILL make a dent in the war on spam. But I would still like to see more people jailed for the activity of spamming rather than for more common reasons.
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...
So Smith went to the Dominican Republic and tried to restart spamming from there. On June 28th, a judge issued an arrest warrant for him. When he returned to the US, he was arrested, but released on bail, with home monitoring.
The prosecution then asked for a six-month criminal contempt sentence for trying to violate the injunction and fleeing prosecution. Smith had a court date for that in July, and lost. So now he's in jail for six months.
This is somebody who just didn't get it when the court ordered him to stop.
This is just the first phase. The felony case is just getting underway.
Okay, great. Now that just means things'll be quiet for a couple months, and then it will be business as normal. If we really want to stop future spam, here's what we can don:
Now you've eliminated the customer base of spam messages. With no customers, spamming won't be profitable ($3 Million?!?!). If it's not profitable, it'll stop.
Tah-dah.
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