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

Where in the world is Sanford Wallace?

[MrMickS]

Now all they have to do is find him to serve the order.

Re:Where in the world is Sanford Wallace?

[hedwards]

The point is that these jackasses don't get to keep the proceeds of their criminal endeavors. Who really cares where the money actually goes as long as the spammers don't get to keep it?

Well, MySpace sort of won

[drhamad]

Important to note here is that nothing was actually tested in court. MySpace won a default judgment because the spammer did not show up. Besides the obvious issues of collecting, that means that they didn't really test anything in court.

Re:Aw, crap.

[gnick]

I hate spammers and MySpace alike, so I'm not sure what to think about this ruling. What's the problem with MySpace? It's trivially easy to ignore and it gives a lot of people that I don't feel like interacting with a place to interact with each-other. 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.

Spammers, however, reach out and touch me in ways I don't like to be touched. Kill 'em with fire.

Re:frivolous

[LoudMusic]

The number of $230 million seems a bit high.

$300 dollars per spam seems excessive when the average return per spam mail probably lies far below $1. The damages done to the "MySpace" name are worth the $300 per incident, especially when there are over 700,000 documented incidents. The cumulative damage of 700,000 people saying "MySpace is nothing but spam - don't go there" can completely destroy a business.

And besides, these assholes are doing the same thing and worse in a variety of places. If you hit them hard enough on the ones you catch them doing hopefully they'll stop doing it elsewhere as well.

They do take some hints...

[Kjella]

Apparently some people just don't take the hint. They've taken one hint - people like that rarely have assets. House? Rented. Car? Leased. Money? Not in the bank. There's nothing to seize and the rent usually isn't refundable, so unless they get at the source all they can do is try to catch the rent money. That usually means it's time to pack up and run the same setup all over again. It's amazing how rich some people can be that officially are dead broke... So 230$ million? Let us know how much they collect. Hard time would be much more effective.

Re:Criminal investigation?

[NormalVisual]

Perhaps for the same reason they police and prosecute the results of weak door locks?