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Spammer Alan Ralsky Pleads Guilty
Czmyt sends the excellent news that one of the US's most notorious spammers has pleaded guilty and could serve 6 years in jail. "Five individuals pleaded guilty today in federal court in Detroit for their roles in a wide-ranging international stock fraud scheme involving the illegal use of bulk commercial e-mails, or 'spamming'... Alan M. Ralsky, 64, of West Bloomfield, Mich., and Scott K. Bradley, 38, also of West Bloomfield, both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and to violate the CAN-SPAM Act. ... Ralsky and Bradley also pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering, and violating the CAN-SPAM Act. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Ralsky acknowledges he is facing up to 87 months in prison and a $1 million fine..."
Hang him from the nearest lamp post and then burn him.
Yeah, we should only allow company executives and rich investors to take vast amounts of money through share price manipulation.
Hey, at least those execs and investors didn't clog up my inbox with V|agr@ ads
We do have more lamp posts.
A little perspective please...
Yes, spam is damn annoying and the guys deserve imprisonment, and confiscation of every penny they earned through spam. But to compare fraudulent execs favorably to these, is a little overboard. Cheating you out of your money is lesser crime than spam?!?!
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
...involved leaving 10% of him here, sending 50% to the Prince of Nigeria, and sending 40% to the corrupt Nigerian government officials as a bribe. It has worked well for generations - But we'll need your help to complete the transaction...
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
Hey, at least those execs and investors didn't clog up my inbox with V|agr@ ads
1999 called. They want their spamfilter back.
Yeah, we should only allow company executives and rich investors to take vast amounts of money through share price manipulation.
Not to worry. If there are three things we have in abundance, it's rope, lamp posts and gasoline.
My blog
Ralsky acknowledges he is facing up to 87 months in prison and a $1 million fine..
Summary says 6 years, then 87 months. Someone want to RTFA and tell me where the difference comes in?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Clearly they are calling the wrong guy - it is obvious that he doesn't have 1999's or anyone's spam-filter.
Cheating me out of my *time* and the usefulness of email *every* *dang* *day*? It's a close call....
I was going to post the sentiment until I saw the other AC above had beaten me to it.
Once he's in jail, we need to find out who his cellmate is, so we can send him inordinate amounts of penis enlargement ads.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
"Greetings friend, this is Homer Simpson, aka, Happy Dude. The courts have ordered me to call everyone, and apologize for my telemarketing scam...I'm sorry. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send $1 to Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. You have the power!"
I say we go green and focus a concave mirror on the guy. We get our pound of (burnt) flesh and the planet doesn't suffer for it!
Let's just simplify it all at no expense to the taxpayers.
Anyone who ever got an unsolicited email from Ralsky gets one shot at him. One for each email. No weapons, no tools, nothing lethal, and no closed fists. Then he goes free.
And then after a few million slaps to the nuts, we all jump up and go "HAHA! Don't you just HATE being misled!" and throw him in prison, take all his money, and give his cellmate (who has anger issues due to being conned in stock scams) a box containing his body weight in Viagra.
THEN we hang him from the nearest lamp post and burn him.
"...Ralsky acknowledges he is facing up to 87 months in A FEDERAL, POUND-ME-IN-THE-ASS prison..."
There, fixed it.
Finally we make real money from SPAM!
Because people STILL buy their products
There are many here who say "It's just a little spam - have some perspective."
OK, so how about this perspective:
Let's just slap his wrist.
Once for every spam reported to Spamcop.net.
Just for one day.
After all, it's just a slap on the wrist - that's not so bad, is it?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Email filtering company MessageLabs reports that Egham, Surrey, on the suburban outskirts of London, is the town that receives the most spam in Britain.
"It's not like there's much else to do," said Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of Egham Hythe, idly whirling his four-foot penis around his head in a desultory fashion. "Expanding your manhood, growing your breasts, increasing your sperm ... the Lib Dem phone calls get a bit much. That's Doctor Busybody, by the way. My Ph.D arrived last week."
Spam has revitalised the local economy. Busybody has given up cab driving and is now working a lucrative job processing payments from home after he sent them his bank details in response to an urgent security message. "I had that King Otumfuo Opoku Ware II in the back of my cab once. Very generous and helpful fellow."
The Egham Tourist Board has seized the day, with plans for a 50 foot tall penis sculpture at Junction 13 of the M25 on the exit ramp to the town. The sculpture will be encircled by a genuine imitation Rolex and spray a fountain of Spermamax, obtained at a very reasonable rate from a Canadian pharmacy. "You will search an hour for your underwear in the ocean of our spam!" is to become the new town motto.
"I did get a good one the other day," says Busybody. "Barrister Matthew Sergeant Busybody of MessageLabs said we could promote our town to millions of people just by sending them an advance fee to process our incoming email. The stuff they try! 'Scuse me, V!k@grk@ kicking in, got to go have sex again. Sorry."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I get as livid as anyone about spam, but the whole prison rape thing really bugs me. Its real and is allowed to occur by our prison system, but is not part of the sentence. Nobody, not even spammers, deserve rape. What I don't get is why it took so long to take down this known spammer.
That is less money that you will have to pay for downloading 25 songs, at least.
Is anal rape really all that hilarious? Me, I'd have him sentenced to 87 months of sorting dumpster content. But his ass would remain his own.
This guy was my neighbor when I was growing up. It doesn't surprise me that he grew up to be a spam king, he was always looking for a way to 'get rich quick' and had a more than average understanding of computers (and a less than average understanding of just about everything else). I can remember him running some sort of telecommunications software on his Apple II every time I was over at his house playing with his daughter. Now looking back on it, I wonder what he was doing and if it was legal. Then again he gave me hundreds of pirated Apple II games at the time so probably not (although I was one happy 10 year old).
In case we need another lamp post, here you go:
Lamp.
Let's see, spammers provide financial incentive to operate botnets that do billions in damage. My mail server rejects over 99% of all incoming mail as spam. The remaining fraction of a percent is about 25% spam. Fail2ban triggers on about 1000 hosts attempting to brute force an SMTP password every single day. If I tail the logs, it's a continuous stream of crap 24/7. I could do without that.
It is a close call. I suppose we just need to make BOTH into permanent porta-potty scrubbers.
He got off easy. Just think of how much money he would owe if he had been downloading music. And I'm sure he got paid well with his spam business.
... it won't make a damned bit of difference in the overall spamming epidemic. One spammer thrown in jail is like stomping on an ant colony; it might give some immediate satisfaction to those who are of that persuasion, but there are still trillions of ants left doing the same thing.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: spam is an economic problem. If the US wrote 500 new anti-spam laws today, making it illegal to so much as consider sending out spam, it wouldn't matter worth shit. People who are sending out spam today do it because people pay them to do it; and they will find places to send it from so that they can keep making money at it. They all know that the US laws aren't worth anything anywhere outside the US (and their worth inside the US is debatable as well), which is part of why we see so much spam come from other countries.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.