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."

Comments

Will I be notified

[dzafez]

Will I be notified, if they find out I'm a victim??

Hell the guy from nigeria didn't write me for a while, I'll send him an E-Mail. I'm still waiting for a large transaction :-)

Re:Will I be notified

[Shakrai]

they just took away his stuff, how lame! he committed a crime and should be punished.

Ya know, as big of a sleezeball as we might think he is, the FBI doesn't (nor should it) have the authority to punish him for whatever crimes you think he might have committed.

That role is reserved for juries and judges.

In Other News...

[thesnarky1]

I am heir to the FBI throne which was recently desposed. FOr only $2000 down, you can secure your right to this massive wealth as well.

What about his crown?

[Datagod]

Did they get his Spam Crown and Scepter?

Re:What about his crown?

[DoraLives]

Did they get his Spam Crown and Scepter?

Am I allowed to ask who's going to get the Royal Shaft?

Oh no!

[rock217]

NOW who will fill my inbox?!

That explains it

[Seq]

I had thought my Inbox was rather empty today...

This isn't news for nerds..

[grasshoppa]

...unless they shot him.

I'm shocked...SHOCKED....

[JoeLinux]

I mean, I'm sure he opted out of FBI raids on questionable business practices....

Re:Charged with what?

[Coneasfast]

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.

Call your FBI and say thanks!

[azav]

I just phoned the Detroit office of the FBI who raided Ralsky's home at (313) 965-2323 and told the responding agent that I was so unbelievably happy that their office raided Alan Ralsky.

The agent was amazed and replied "uh thank you. We don't get calls like this very often."

OMG. Wow.

This is an excellent opportunity to show your support that we STRONGLY support their action and efforts!

If they know their is huge public support for this, that may help them to shut down more of these spammers!

This is AWESOME!

Just call and say thanks and this will keep things moving in the right direction.

w00t!

Re:Call your FBI and say thanks!

[schon]

I hardly get any spam at all. I use spamassassin on my server and junkmatcher on my client.

If you hardly get any spam at all, then why do you need *TWO* spam filters?

You *GET* lots of spam - just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it's not there.

Re:Call your FBI and say thanks!

[vsprintf]

No, I don't get lots of spam. Most of it is denied at the SMTP protocol level and is never even written to disk. Most of the rest is filtered out based on content and /dev/null'd before it reaches the mailbox delivery step. The client side filter is then left to handle the very small quantity of mail that is difficult to discern with more general measures and makes it past the SMTP and MDA level and is of course then downloaded by the useragent for fine-tuning of the local filter.

Okay, I've seen responses like this in the past, and I'll admit that I have little knowledge of how the whole thing works (because I'm not really interested as long as it works). However, whether those messages are being dumped into my throw-away hotmail account's junk folder or being transported *somewhere*, they are being written to disk somewhere. They are also using up bandwidth during transport, and that bandwidth is not being paid for by the spammers. I don't understand the logic of people who claim spam is not a problem just because they don't see any in their inbox. That seems a bit like claiming that the termites aren't really a problem because your house hasn't fallen down yet.

A Step Forward In the Fight Against Spam

[humankind]

This is a very good sign.

The reason spammers operate is because it has been profitable for them due to their operating expenses (apathetic law enforcement, hazy jurisdiction, theft of third-party bandwidth and resources).

As more of these people get raided and have to deal with serious legal and criminal issues, the "cost" of operating will go up substantially, and as a result, it will not be as profitable for them to operate.

Let's hope the FBI follows through on this and puts this guy in jail. There's no doubt he committed a ton of crimes, including computer tampering, pornography, identity theft, etc. Spammers routinely break loads of laws in operating their business. Finally, we're seeing some agencies start to enforce these laws.

The FBI will e-mail you

[jurt1235]

This is the proposed message:

DeAR u.ser

Precvio3sly you have b33n victim of unsol.citated e-mail, so called s.pam selling u v1agra and p.enis enlarg.ements products, us.iNG aNNoying layouts ant teipos to confu..se your s.p.a.m..filters.
The FBI now offers you the ReA.L links to the places where you can buy your V.1agrA and P.eniSEnlar.gement produCTs for the real pr1ce without the middle S.P.am man.

Please go to v1agrahfDUgfapitdrGPSRGf.fbi.gov for the fastest S$hop

Re:Charged with what?

[Sloppy]

Spam is awful, but 20 years in prison for it is just absurd.

Oh, I agree. If I send a spam to someone, I should only have to spend a day in jail. Maybe even just an hour. Half an hour? Oh, whatever. And if I expect this reasonably light sentence for myself committing the mostly harmless (but nevertheless malicious and fraudulent) crime of spamming a fellow human being, then it's only fair for this guy to get a fair sentence likewise.

So let's only imprison him for one hour..

..per victim.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[L.Bob.Rife]

This guy is not harnless, he causes economic damage to the nation. Those are real-world consequences of having to divert resources that could be used to help businesses grow, into fighting spam. Setting up spam filters costs money, having workers delete dozens of junkmails daily costs money, downloading hundreds of gigs of junk costs money. Whether you like it or not, this guy causes real problems.

Re:Charged with what?

[keraneuology]

Most of the damage is not done to the user, but to the ISP, backbone providers and hosting providers. For the user it might be an annoyance, but for them it costs money.

All higher costs incurred by the ISP are passed along to the consumer, ergo all of the damage is done to the user, though indirectly.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[bani]

No he isn't harmless. He hires virus authors to write programs to infect PCs so he can spam from them. He ddoses networks. He rips people off.

He might not go round clubbing people and taking their money, but he's still a big time criminal, defrauding people of millions of dollars. He's causing economic harm on massive scales, and the people being hurt are more often than not the elderly.

He's also an easy target since he publically boasts about what he does, the FBI would be considered neglectful if they didn't take him down.

This is good news but we need *MORE* enforcement

[merc]

Alan Ralsky is one of the most egregious and pernicious of the spam scum out there. He tops the ROKSO (Registry of Known Spam Offenders) lists and is responsible for a very large volume of spam originating from APNIC netspace. Much of his spam hosting is overseas and he regularly emits spam by relaying it through zombied systems open relays or proxies. As you will see from the article some of his own state's anti-spam legislation were actually created with him solely in mind.

I can only hope we see more of this in kind, especially Waggoner, Marin, Scelson, Lin, Martino and ESPECIALLY Soloway who, like Ralsky, has always been quite the unapologetic spammer.

As an earlier poster said, thank you to the FBI for their hard work, and also for starting to take this problem seriously.

you don't understand investigations.

[www.sorehands.com]

I had a tour of the FBI's cyber crime office in Boston -- they got some neat toys.

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.