MySpace Wins $230 Million Judgment Against Sanford Wallace

smooth wombat writes "Apparently some people just don't take the hint. The latest story in the Sanford Wallace spamming saga is a $230 million verdict against Wallace and his partner, Walter Rines, when they failed to show up in court. Wallace and Rines were accused by MySpace of creating their own accounts and taking over other accounts through phishing scams, and then using those accounts to send out bogus emails to other members. The emails sent would indicate a video or web site but when people would go to the link, the two would make money through the number of hits generated or they would try to sell something such as ring tones. According to MySpace, the pair sent over 730,000 emails to members which resulted in bandwidth and delivery-related costs as well as complaints from hundreds of members. The 2003 CAN-SPAM Act allows MySpace to collect $100 per violation or triple that amount when the spam is sent 'willfully and knowingly.'"

Comments

Re:Where in the world is Sanford Wallace?

[Alzheimers]

Did they check his Twitter?

Sanford's brother?

[gEvil (beta)]

Well, as long as Sanford's brother Marcellus doesn't get convicted, then everything is okay.

Re:Excite.com? I remember them!

[youthoftoday]

Forgot that thing beginning with G? A good place to start looking is http://www.google.com/ , you can find most things there if you remember a few details.

They can take our spam...

[absurdist]

...but they'll never take our FRRRREEEEEED-oh, wait, wrong Wallace. Sorry.

Re:Aw, crap.

[DdJ]

I just wish that there was a real-world version where all of the MySpace users could voluntarily commit themselves and withdraw from the rest of the world.

cf. "the mall"

Re:Excite.com? I remember them!

[QuantumRiff]

In the late 90's, I got pulled into a VP's office, because someone in our building had accessed an "inappropriate" web page during our late night shift in a wafer fab. I pointed out that I don't have access to the area where the offices are (I was a clean room tech back then), and asked if they looked to see who had entered the area with their electronic key. Then I asked what website they had visited. They looked at the stack of papers and said, "Excite.com".. I laughed and asked if they had ever looked at the site. (they hadn't) Maybe thats why I am so deadset against filtering now!