Spammer Alan Ralsky Indicted

Several users have written to tell us that notorious spammer Alan Ralsky has been indicted along with ten others on 41 counts of spam-related illegal activity. Ralsky has had trouble with the law in the past, and the current litany of charges includes mail and wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and violation of federal spamming laws. From the Detroit Free Press: "The 41-count indictment said Ralsky ... and others used unsolicited e-mail to pump up the price of largely worthless stock in Chinese companies and sold the stock reaping huge profits and leaving Internet subscribers who purchased it holding the bag. The operation also used illegal methods to maximize the amount of spam that could be sent while evading spam-blocking devices and tricked recipients into opening and acting on advertisements, prosecutors said."

Comments

It's about time!

[JustShootMe]

This guy has been a pox on the net for years! Anyone remember that time a long time ago where he was getting so flagrant about it people started signing him up for datalogs, he was getting tons of them in the mail, and had the nerve to get angry about it?

This guy deserves everything he gets. Maybe he'll luck out and his cellmate will have responded to some of those penis pill spams.

(I hate prison rape references as a matter of principle, but here's a guy that I really have a hard time mustering up *too* much sympathy for).

Legit mail now an impurity

[farbles]

Spam has steadily increased on my server to where it is 98%+ of all mail. Virus mail is about 1% so real legitimate email is now less than one per cent of mail. Real mail is just an impurity in the spam stream.

It's crazy and it keeps increasing month after month. It has cost my company thousands of dollars in equipment, tech support and other manpower costs, lost business, and user bad-will for delayed or filtered mail. When you spread that around to all the other mail systems out there, it is clear that spammers have been doing some real damage.

When someone does catch one, they should go medieval on them. In our enlightened times this means mega-fines and long jail terms in the worst prisons that can be found but honestly I would not be bothered by putting their heads on pikes as an example for what happens when you screw over millions of people.

Re:Dear Alan Ralsky

[Nullav]

"Why did the cancer cross the road?
To metastasize."
Since when does taste matter when telling jokes on an anonymous forum, far away from anyone who could be offended (maybe not very far, but how would you know)? Save that formality for the meatspace.
People tend to distance themselves from the subject; it's not like people crowd around some poor soul being raped at knifepoint, nor would many of the people flinging around holocaust jokes bust a gut when shown a video about WW2 concentration camps.

Re:Really so bad?

[gmack]

Surprisingly well actually. I list Leo Kuvayev's former company "2K Services" as a credit card processing company (the job I was hired for). When they ask why I left I tell them he changed his business model to something I couldn't participate in and still have a conscience. If they ask for details I tell them everything and I reap the scored sympathy points for having the worst job experience imaginable.

For the record I spent several weeks trying to change his mind then turned down a raise and left the company several months before his new business model forced a national carrier to change their policy on spam and cut his fibre optic connection which was exactly what I warned him they would do when I gave him my contractually required two weeks notice.

He must be thick, or greedy.

[Stu101]

I'm sorry but if the business I was in was exceptionally borderline legal and I had been caught and prosecuted before, I would stop doing business in that business, period. He KNEW he faced a chance of having a major conviction but carried on anyway. Only reasons could be greed or stupidity.

To make him look even more stupid, this guy is a multi millionaire. It's not like he couldn't retire and just live a nice life investing his money and living off the interest.