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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."
In other words...good riddance scumbag.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If this guy's getting 30 years, then whoever's behind the "United States National Medical Association" deserves the death penalty. I've never seen so much spam for one target site as I have for US-NMA, and what puzzles me is that the spam continues even though the domain has been parked at an error page for at least a week now. It's almost as if they no longer care about selling fake pills, they just want to annoy the hell out of everyone...
Oh well, kudos to those involved for putting another spammer away. Keep up the good work.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
It seems the spammer did everything in his power to maximize his jail sentence. Not only did he defy the judge at every opportunity, but he also threatened to kill a witness's children if she testified. He probably could have gotten away with serious fines if he had only cooperated, but instead he's probably going to lose not just his 10+ Automobiles, but also as many of his millions of dollars as the government can find.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
30 years is tough. He is probably really anxious and stressed, I suggest he take some x.a@x!
It figures. I ran out of mod points yesterday so instead, I'll respond to the troll.
It's not about the government telling someone what business they can or cannot run, it's about this person selling pills which are claimed to be the real thing. In other words, he was selling placebos and not telling people these weren't the real thing.
Further, Congress has delegated authority to regulate medicinces to the FDA since medicines are not state specific. You can find the same bottle of Advil in Georgia as you can in Kansas. The FDA has stated that if it's a medicine, it must undergo rigorous testing to prove its relative safety.
This guy was claiming he had real drugs which he could deliver on the cheap. Not only was he violating FDA guidelines, he was perpetrating fraud.
So tell me, what country do you live in that allows someone to perpetrate fraud and not get penalized?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Sentencing guidelines. The PROSECUTOR not the JUDGE makes the ultimate decision of what charges to bring and the Judge has to apply the guidelines and explain if the Judge deviates from the guidelines (upward or downward).
.50 sniper rifle from his living room - just to see how far the bullet goes? GUESS WHAT - we have to have laws!).
FWIW, this guy is much more than a spammer and 30 years is far from a reasonable sentence. 300 years for conspiracy to murder the child of an adverse witness is a fair term FOR THAT ONE CRIME.
A Cage is where we put people too dangerous to be a part of society. (IMHO, that includes you loonies who think business and people should have unfettered power - s**t what happens when your "unfettered" business starts feeding us CO-treated bad meat or your drunken neighbor decides to fire his
How was the perp able to withdraw money from a frozen account?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Still excessive in my opinion. American sentences boggle one's mind... After Stalin's death the maximum sentence in USSR was reduced from 25 years to 15 — although many crimes were still punishable by death (as they are here) and one also got to spend their days in much harsher conditions than in the US.
The main difference here is that in the US sentences are added up upon one another, whereas in most of the rest of the world they run concurrently. It could be argued, that American system continues to deter criminals after their first crime, while the other system makes the subsequent crimes "free". On the other hand, once a crook has accumulated enough years in US, their subsequent crimes are also free, because any sentence will be, in effect, a life one. With a considerable sentencing leeway given to judges, in neither system do the subsequent crimes need to be "free".
Increasing the harshness of the punishment hardens the criminals and makes them more likely to escalate violence. There is a well known historical precedent from medieval Europe, where a local baron instituted death penalty for highway robbers. Having nothing more to risk, the robbers started killing their victims instead of simply robbing them...
What works best is the inevitability of punishment, rather then the harshness of it. 25% of the spammers receiving a 1 year sentence would deter more scumbags, than 2 of them (a fraction of a percent) getting publicly chopped up on a wheel.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
...he'll end up in prison with men who've enlarged their dicks with v1agra and are looking for HOT SEX NOW
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.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There are two basic problems. The primary one is that doctors are legally restricted about how much medication they can give, and are taking professional risks if they don't seriously restrict the prescriptions they write for these medications. The government is stopping doctors from helping people in the name of the "War on Drugs."
The second problem is that only the pain sufferer knows what they are going through. I think some doctors do not give the sufferer enough choice about what degree of medication they take. My doctor denied me a hydrocodone (Vicodin) refill, despite these facts: 1. It provided pain relief when over the counter drugs did not. 2. My pain was very bad and was reducing my ability to work, sleep, and generally function. 3. I was only taking 50% of the maximum allowed daily dose. I had not abused the medication in any way, and used it only when most needed. 4. A reasonable dose of hydrocodone is actually safer than many over-the-counter pain drugs.
The only reason my doctor could give for denying my medication was the risk of developing addiction. But I had showed no signs of addiction, and when I stopped the medication I experienced no withdrawal. I just experienced a lot of pain.
For more very interesting thoughts see this article, "The DEA's War on Pain Doctors"
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.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks