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Spammer Robert Soloway Arrested

Posted by samzenpus on from the that-should-fix-it dept.

Mike writes "Yahoo is reporting that US prosecutors captured Robert Soloway, a prolific Internet marketer responsible so much junk e-mail they called him "Spam King." Soloway was arrested in Seattle, Washington, a week after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud. Soloway is accused of using botnets to disguise where e-mail originated and of forging return addresses of real people or businesses for his mass mailings. If convicted as charged, Soloway will face a maximum sentence of more than 65 years in prison and a fine of 250,000 dollars."

13 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Is 65 years excessive? by lib3rtarian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't decide, what do people think, 65 years is basically a life sentence. Is that excessive?

    1. Re:Is 65 years excessive? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think that sentence for all charges not just spamming: identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud. So if you add them all up, 65 years is probably right.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    2. Re:Is 65 years excessive? by smooth+wombat · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Is that excessive?


      Nope, not in the least. When you consider that he took over people's machines, used those machines to scam people, took their money and laundered it for his own use and forged other people's email addresses for the return addresses on his emails, thus having innocent people harassed, 65 years is a good start.

      Solitary confinement with him only able to be out three hours a day would be a good thing. In fact, use his money the government wants to confiscate to pay for his incarceration. That way the taxpayers don't have to foot to the bill for this asshat.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    3. Re:Is 65 years excessive? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      apply a very simple test: "What does the average murderer/rapist/pedophile get when convicted?" If the answer is less then the person in question I ask "What's worse, what this person did or what they did?"
      You have to be careful because murder/rape/pedophilia is directed at one or a few victims. Spamming is a distributed crime. Each individual victim may have suffered less, but the aggregate damage may be much more.

      Is there a difference between stealing $50,000 from a bank, and stealing 1 cent from each of 5 million of the bank's customers? It's the same amount of money, and the same people are going to absorb the cost. But for some reason people think "1 cent per person isn't that much" and decide to let the spammer off easy. Just because the crime is distributed across many victims doesn't make it any less of a crime.

    4. Re:Is 65 years excessive? by Gospodin · · Score: 5, Funny

      Whoever this Mr. Noone is, he really sounds like the victim here.

      --
      ...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
  2. Thank Goodness by ReidMaynard · · Score: 5, Funny

    Todo List:
    [x] Eliminate SPAM From Internet
    [ ] Bring peace to Middle East
    [ ] Make $1,000,000,000

    That's one less thing for me to do now...

    --
    -- www.globaltics.net

    Political discussion for a new world

    1. Re:Thank Goodness by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Funny

      I can help you with that last one. You see, my uncle died recently and he was really rich, but I'm having some trouble getting the money out of the country..............

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. More on Soloway.. by Dynamoo · · Score: 5, Informative
    Soloway also has close ties to other arch-spammers Alex Polyakov and Leo Kuvayev. Between those three there is a substantial involvement in fraud, money laundering and even child pornography. It's hard to say who is responsible for what.. but I betcha that the Russians are running scared that Soloway will really start to talk. I've documented this connection a couple of times in the past (see here and here.)

    There's plenty of evidence around to nail Soloway for a long, long time.. but to be honest he's not even the worst spammer out there. I suspect the possibility of a plea bargain is quite likely, so that international law enforcement can get to the even bigger fish.

    --
    Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
  4. Re:give hima real punishment... by giorgiofr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Rehabilitate him, you say. Is he ill? Is he handicapped? Is he being manipulated? No. He made his choices and got caught. Now it's *retribution time*. Yeah, revenge. Criminals commit crimes deliberately, I don't see why we should assume that they are somehow to be "saved", saved by what I ask? Their own decisions? I lead a somewhat free life just like they do, they have always had a choice, they chose to commit crimes, and now they get caught and suddenly it's "think of the criminals" time? No way. Rehabilitation works for people who *care* about social acceptance. This kind of people obviously do not care.
    However I believe that spamming should not be a crime. In the grand scheme of things... robbing someone is much worse.

    --
    Global warming is a cube.
  5. Soloway Mocks MS Suit - Will he mock again? by newsact · · Score: 5, Informative
    Spamhaus Project has a rather long list of Soloway's recorded history. He mocks every attempt to nail him such us the lawsuit from Microsoft http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK5164 We will probably do the same again...

    "I've been in business for over 10 years with the best accountants in the world, and lawyers in all 50 states that know how to run my business legally and protect me from all lawsuits that come my way.. not a concern.. I just pay them a few hours of my work and they take care of the entire cases for me..."
  6. Re:give hima real punishment... by hotdiggitydawg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    However I believe that spamming should not be a crime. In the grand scheme of things... robbing someone is much worse. You had my mod points coming your way, right up until that last sentence. His actions have no doubt cost countless people around the world significant amounts of time, money and resources (bandwidth bills, cost of wages paid to clean up infected machines, additional infrastructure to cope with increased mail volume, etc. etc.). The only real difference is that he is "robbing" many people instead of one... OK he's not committing physical assault, but he is effectively trespassing electronically.

    Bad analogy time (hey, this is Slashdot, after all...) - he's not breaking into your house and stealing all the electrical goods to sell at the local pawn shop. Instead, he's breaking into every single house in the whole neighbourhood while the owners are away at work, and using all the bedrooms to run his own private brothel, and then leaving the owners to clean up the mess.

    Maybe his actions sit somewhere between robbery and fraud, but either way they are still most definitely criminal IMHO. Simply spamming (in the literal meaning of the word - "sending unsolicited email") should be a misdemeanor depending entirely on the volume of spam sent, and whether any of the email headers are fraudulent. Bot-farming, however, should be a felony.
  7. Re:give hima real punishment... by rjshields · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Spamming is effectively robbing people of little bits of time and other resources, so it's kind of like stealing but spread over millions of people instead of a single victim.

    --
    In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
  8. Re:give hima real punishment... by tacocat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I had mod points today I would give them to you...

    spam will never go away, it's a multi billion dollar industry and people actually buy this stuff. So there's a very strong business case to keep it around. Capitalism...

    The process of sending unsolicited email may or may not be something you can criminalize if the sender is accurately representing themselves in the email. However, the process of not removing someone from a mailing list upon their request can be considered harassment. I don't know if harassment is a misdemeanor or a felony. Probably depends on the degree. I'll assume for now it is not a felony.

    But doing this under snake oil pretenses is a criminal intent. You hide your true identify by forge mail headers and trespassing onto other peoples computers.

    The forgery should be treated as just exactly that -- forgery. I think this is considered a felony.

    The invasion of someone elses computer should be treated as breaking and entering or theft. The economic value of the theft should be calculated on the cost of the machine being stolen. This would push most actions out of small claims/misdemeanors into felony court. So this too is a felony.

    So there you have it, based on previously existing law. Spam is legal if accurately represented. Continuing to send Spam is a misdemeanor. Sending spam as a misrepresentation of yourself or through resources you do not have permission to use, is a felony. Is that so hard to work with?