Spammer Lance Atkinson Fined $16 Million

Nashville Guy writes "According to Australia's The Age, 'A New Zealand man living in Queensland and believed to be behind the world's largest spam operation, has been ordered to pay more than $16 million for running the illegal enterprise. Lance Atkinson, 26, originally from Christchurch, was living in Pelican Waters on the Sunshine Coast when the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had his assets frozen last year. ... The FTC found Atkinson and American Jody Smith were at the centre of the world's largest internet spam operation, dubbed 'AffKing,' having recruited spammers from around the world.'"

Comments

And Yet He Won't Pay a Penny

[eldavojohn]

The BBC coverage correctly notes:

Mr Atkinson will only have to pay his part of the $15.15m fine if he enters the US.

I guess all we can do is pray for extradition?

Re:And Yet He Won't Pay a Penny

[clone53421]

Also, according to that article, Atkinson’s assets weren’t frozen (contrary to what the summary says).

Jody Smith, his accomplice in the US, was the one whose assets were frozen. Smith has pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to traffic counterfeit goods” and is to be sentenced here in the US this month (December).

However, I still have hopes for Lance Atkinson seeing justice... his brother, Shane, had already been fined $122,000 in a separate case by a New Zealand court (Lance’s conviction was made by a US court, which has no jurisdiction in New Zealand – so he’d have to be extradited, unless he foolishly decided to come here for some reason). I imagine if Lance could be similarly tried in a New Zealand court, he’d be required to pay whatever they demanded.

Re:And Yet He Won't Pay a Penny

[kirill.s]

...where he would pay the fine or go to jail and share a cell with men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.

Re:And Yet He Won't Pay a Penny

[DoofusOfDeath]

It appears that New Zealand does extradite to the U.S.

I guess the question is whether or not the U.S. will request it.

just data

[czarangelus]

Advertisement wants to be free.

Additionally

[Rik Sweeney]

He was also told to apologise to everyone he'd sent spam to.

Foolishly, the court allowed him to send these apologies via email.

Damn moronic 'anti-spam' laws.

[DavidTC]

According to the original documentation, 'In early 2008, a security company identified one botnet -- which it dubbed "Mega-D" -- that sent sparn promoting Affking's VPXL and King Replica products as the worst botnet in the world, accounting for 32% of all spam.'

The Mega-D botnet consisted at least 264,784 computers.

That's 264,784 UNAUTHORIZED COMPUTER ACCESS FELONIES.

Why the FUCK are we 'fining' someone who committed at least 264,784 felonies? We invade goddamn countries and charge people with war crimes for that level of criminality!

Anti-spam laws are nonsense. Forget the damn anti-spam laws. Lock them up for the felonies they're committing. Extradition would be a lot easier, too. (Of course, we could just find a few hundred IPs this guy hijacked in Australia, turn them over, and have him locked up there his entire life, instead.)

Re:Completely the WRONG tactic

[JoshuaZ]

Spam is at its heart an economic problem, but that doesn't mean that it can't be solved using other tactics as well as economic ones. For any far reaching problem in society, the use of many different strategies together has potential to do a better job than any single one. Most responses to proposed anti-spam solutions fail to see that the solutions should occur not in an isolated form but together with other solutions. Thus for example, the standard copy and pasted anti-spam response checklist on Slashdot is always used as if the proposed technique is being touted as a magic bullet. In that regard, spam is a bit like cancer. It is quite silly to claim that we will ever have a single cure for cancer, because cancer is a complicated set of diseases with multiple causes. But a series of different responses (such as chemotherapy, surgery and radiation) used appropriate together can do a pretty decent job in most cases. Thus, cancer is no longer a death sentence. The spam problem should be targetd the same way.

RecycleDirect

[Animats]

The USPS should offer RecycleDirect service. With RecycleDirect, you specify which classes of mail are automatically forwarded to the regional mixed paper recycling center nearest the sender. RecycleDirect mail will be diverted at the first sorting post office directly to the recycling center.