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FBI Raids Home of Spam King Alan Ralsky
wstearns writes "The Detroit News is reporting that the FBI has raided Alan Ralsky's home. In the raid, the FBI took computers and financial records, effectively shutting him down. Mr. Ralsky has been frequently covered here."
Last time I checked, it was legal to e-mail someone you don't know.
if you read the article (not slashdotted yet):
The law also forbids spammers from using multiple e-mail addresses or domain names to camouflage their identities. Penalties include up to 20 years' imprisonment and an $11,000 fine per offense.
Warrants show FBI agents sought evidence Ralsky and Bradley sent commercial e-mail using at least 14 domain names.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Warrants unsealed last week revealed that agents in September seized computers, laptops, financial records and disks from the 8,000-square-foot home of Alan M. Ralsky.
Apparently, he is getting due process.
Ralksy isn't the worst of the bunch.. perhaps his BIGGEST mistake is actually having some sort of media profile. There are plenty of spammers out there who are even more despicable than him, but it seems that Ralsky is an easy target. Perhaps they should consider going after Robert Soloway or Alec Defrawy next?
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Because it was the FBI, they were enforcing federal law, not a local law that the Michigan lawmakers may have passed.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Ignorant, uninformed responses like yours really tick me off.
As an ISP that has to spend twice as much on bandwidth and resources as I need because of the bandwidth spammers consume, I can certify that it costs me a lot of money.
Upwards of 70-80% of all mail traffic on the net is spam. Probably at least one third of all Internet traffic may end up being bandwidth and resources these scumbags steal, usually by exploiting armies of compromised, zombied PCs to do their distribution.
Don't even get me started about the countless hours of tech support, computer downtime and other wasted resources due to innocent (and sometimes naive) computer users who have inadvertently had trojan software/plug-ins or worms invade their machines... This is all the work primarily of spammers.
It's not a simple case of installing a mail filter. That doesn't do a goddam thing to stop spamming. This is like you turning off your television as a way to stop the war in Iraq. Good luck.
4. Use perl's regular expressions to filter out all the spam
That's what Spamassassin is for.
They didn't just take away his stuff. They took away his stuff, to then copy it onto network storage. Then copy the drives onto otpical media. Then copy it onto hard drives. All while leaving the originals unmodified. Then they will analyze the data to gather evidence.
It would be real sweet to know the domains that they used so that every spam victim can file suit against Ralsky and Bradley. We can take out spammers with distributed lawsuits. A spammer can survive 1,2 or maybe 10 lawsuits, but can they survive 100? I, with help, took out Avtech.
I tracked down a big time ink spammer, going under the name of payless inks, top quality inks, inks on sale. I posted the strings to search for on my spam page so that any spam victim can file suit. If you file suit, contact me and I'd be happy to serve the summons and complaint.
Fight Spammers!
There was no mention of it in the article, so it probably wasn't used in Ralsky's case, but....
In the US, law enforcement working for any level of government can seize whatever they want under the RICO Act. They simply have to say "this object was related to selling drugs" and its their's. Doesn't have to be true. Doesn't require a trial. Doesn't even need evidence to support the statement. It is just gone. And good luck getting it back if it isn't related to drugs. http://www.fear.org
I believe it is unconstitutional, but it happens on a very regular basis. One day I hope someone is able to bring it to the US Supreme Court and have all forfeiture laws abolished. But while it exists, it couldn't happen to a more deserving person if they did permanently seize Ralsky's equipment. Even bad laws can be useful occasionally.
Only on
We have to turf about 94% of all incoming email. I personally get more than 1 Mb of spam filtered to my junk folder a day for manual perusal in case any important messages got tagged by mistake.
Twenty years in prison is peanuts for the suffering these monsters have caused. Put me in a room with this poor excuse for a human and a big woodchipper and I'd be entertained for several whole minutes. No need to look in on us.
forgot the obligatory google local url:Al's Place
"million zombie pc army". your bandwidth, servers, and electricity are all free via your infected victims. just ask ralsky, he's the master.