30 Years For Online Pharmacy Spammer

jotter507 writes "So, you get arrested for running an illegal online pharmacy and the judge orders you to stop selling medication over the Internet. Don't sit around and do nothing before the trial! Run off to the Dominican Republic on a false passport, withdraw money from an account ordered frozen, and start up another online 'pharmacy.' It didn't end well for 27-year old Christopher William Smith, also known as 'Rizler.' The world-reviled spammer and Internet drug dispenser received a 30-year sentence from a federal judge on Wednesday."

Comments

Before anyone calls this sentence excessive

[elrous0]

Keep in mind that this guy did a LOT more than just spamming or even selling drugs. He fled the country, was laundering money, and (most egregiously) was trying to hire a hitman to kill one of the children of a witness against him.

In other words...good riddance scumbag.

Anarchism != Libertarianism

[dazedNconfuzed]

Get your "ism"s straight.

Libertarianism would certainly not tolerate this guy, as he was running a scam, committed what any sane person would consider real crimes, and solicited murder - exactly the kind of thing Libertarians DO want a government around to deal with, and deal with harshly & efficiently.

The word you're looking for is Anarchism - where everything he did would be legal precisely because absolutely nothing would be illegal, and that because there would be no government to declare anything illegal.

Re:Anarchism != Libertarianism

[spun]

That's not anarchism. You do know that libertarianism is a just a minor sub-branch of individualist anarchism, right? Anarchism means no heirarchy and no initiation of force, not no organization or laws.

Re:Hah!

[king-manic]

now I am going to be stuck footing the bill for 30 years of keeping this worthless piece of crap alive in a prison where bleeding heart pansies have demanded that criminals be treated better than the average citizen. So he will have cable, a gym, free food, a place to sleep, etc...I'm sure plenty of homeless would kill for that (and probably have because we have set up such a sweet deal for them). For all your "prison is a rough place" people...I imagine living on the street, not eating, and frequently being beaten or killed by moron teens for sport, or maybe mauled for insurance fraud reasons, is probably a bit worse.

Prison isn't fun. A friend of mine spend 2 in a Canadian prison for sellign pot and turned his life around because he never wants to go back. This is a massively built black guy who would never have to worry about beingont he receiving end of prison rape.

The whole "but homeless people would kill to be there" is a fallacy too. Life on the streets is rough but you still have some freedoms to massage your vices or turn it around. In America/Canada you still can eat regularly as well and you pan handle enough to get some booze or food fairly easily. How often do you hear in hedlines that a homeless person comitted a crime to go to prison. I have never heard of this. I live in one of the coldest cities in NA. I'm sure it happens in some places but the arguementis a fallacy because our prisons here and there aren't filled with homeless. Their filled with drug dealers. Check the stats.

Re:Hah!

[Just Some Guy]

In America they teach you to pursue the "American Dream." This guy does he gets 30 years, meanwhile the guy who rapes your preteen daughter gets 3-5.

The guy wasn't "just" a spammer. He ran an online pharmacy, and his assistant (whose children he tried to have killed) was responsible for procuring Vicodin for him to sell.

He was a fraud, a fugitive, and a would-be killer. He was also apparently willing to sell your teenage daughter real narcotics, and did so often enough that the gov't sold 1.6 million dollars worth of his cars at auction. Sorry, I can't drum up a lot of sympathy for him.

He sold many things of different legality

[billstewart]

According to Wikipedia article and this article, Smith sold a lot of different things over the years. Some of them allegedly included

• Genuine pharmaceuticals, with high prices and potentially-dodgy prescriptions (e.g. his pet doctor would prescribe you hydrocodone).
• Penis pills, including genuine Viagra and also dubious enhancement products.
• Cable TV descramblers of dubious legality
• Fake college degrees (or real degrees from non-accredited colleges, or something like that.)
• He also violated anti-spam laws, and was ordered to pay AOL a lot of money for spamming their customers, and has been accused of using a variety of less-legitimate methods to get his spam delivered.
  

  Also, of course, after being convicted but before being sentenced, he tried to stash some of money where the Feds couldn't get it, which is not the brightest way to get the judge to take it easy on you.