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Spam King Busted by Secret Service
An anonymous reader writes "Adam Vitale, aka Batch1 aka Baxter, 25, of Boynton Beach, FL, and his partner Todd Moeller, aka M3rk, of New Jersey, are accused of sending nearly 50,000 pieces of spam e-mail to more than 1.2 million AOL subscribers.
US Secret Service agents used a confidential informant to hire Moeller and Vitale to deliver spam, which advertised a computer security product."
The poor (rich?) sap's booking photo, complete with ::gulp:: his address. Too bad spammers aren't required to disclose their email address on arrest.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
It is about time that the authorities are starting to take a harder look at those thieves of computer ressources. I'm not only talking about the criminal botnet operators, but the "mainsleaze" spam senders.
But the true way of fighting spam is not nuking spammers per se, but rather nuking ISPs who cater to spammers, in any way, be it domain registrations, DNS service and plain web-hosting, both legit and botnets. This will make them think twice in not having a good, hard look at their abuses@* mailboxen.
US Secret Service agents used a confidential informant to hire Moeller
I guess it is good that the Secret Service doesn't have to worry about entrapment rules. It's great to hear that spam is getting wiped out but at what cost - the government is now hiring people to do things that will get them dragged into court? Maybe if everyone (including you, everyone you know and the government) stopped hiring/buying the service then maybe I might receive a little less spam and that is the only way it will really cease being a problem.
Check here to see all the duties of the Secret Service....among them, you will find:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Unfortunately another will just take their place. We need technology to stop Spam. Human nature being what it is will continue where ever there is a buck to be made.
and also
Since 1984, our investigative responsibilities have expanded to include crimes that involve financial institution fraud, computer and telecommunications fraud, false identification documents, access device fraud, advance fee fraud, electronic funds transfers, and money laundering as it relates to our core violations.
These guys are spammers. If they've advertised p3nis enlargement pills, they've committed fraud and, according to the Secret Service they have jurisdiction over this area. Disclaimer: IANAL
Read for yourself: http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/mission.shtml
ConsultingFair.com
Entrapment means causing someone to do something they would not normally do in order to get them to break the law. This "service" that the spammers were offering was their daily business. It was their regular mode of operation. All the Secret Service did was send an informant in undercover to pose as a customer. Thus there was no entrapment, this is basic policework.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
our new hero in a jail cell with a bunch of cell mates who have all enlarged their penis, ordered Viagra, and are looking for a new relationship.
For the sake of the demonstration, I'll pick smaller numbers. Send 2 messages to 5 persons, A, B, C, D, E.
1) Send message #1 to A, B, C.
2) Send message #2 to C, D, E.
It is not said that all 1.5M people received each of the 50k messages.
In spam emails, the From: and To: fields are often erroneous. In that case, the actual recipients are in the Bcc field. So, several people receive a same message that seems addressed to only one.
Other comment:
50k distinct emails to a total of 1.5M people
If the spammers offered a service, asked for money for it, and the SS then gave it to them, there's no entrapment. In fact, they'd need to complete the transaction to prove something illegal was going on. It's not illegal to talk about selling drugs, or spamming or whatever, it's illegal to actually sell those things. If you've ever watched one of those undercover cop shows, you'll notice they always actually make a buy before arresting a suspect. Otherwise, nothing illegal has happened.
You'll also notice they are careful to let the dealer make the offer. Again another part of making sure it's not entrapment. If they offer it to you, it's obviously something they'd normally do. You didn't entice them, since they came out and offered. So if the spammers offered a service, and then said they'd need a few grand for equipment and such, it's not entrapment. If the SS asked them to spam, they said they weren't setup for it, and the SS said they'd give them what they need, that's entrapment.
Generally, they are very careful about these things.
I hope, for his sake, his cellmate hasn't been taking some of the other pills this guy was selling. On second thought, I hope he has.
#include <signature.h>
Google is perfect, because the addresses are "plussed", so you can add a special code ("pig.hogger+bullshit@gmail.com") to tag where you give your e-mail to, and if you see different junk coming in, you know very well who's the sleazy fucker who sold your e-mail. At that time, you can filter out the "+bullshit" emails...
It's trespass on the bot computers. As soon as they're used to send email claiming to be from elsewhere, that's fraud. Stealing a checkbook is simple theft, writing checks with it is fraud.
-- Alastair