Russian Anti-Spam Advisor Accused of Spamming

Keith noted that Krebs has an interesting story on a Russian businessman being accused of running a spam ring while serving as an anti-spam adviser to the Russian government. It's a strange tale including an investigation in 2007 that was abandoned when the chief investigator was actually hired to work for the spammer. Not suspicious at all, no way.

Comments

Ah, Yes, Our Good Friend Pavel Vrublevsky

[eldavojohn]

CEO of ChronoPay, the ultra shady payment "processor" that functioned more like an account hijacker. Looking to partner with Paypal for Russian transactions as well as online Sino-Russian transactions.

If you used the illegitimate MP3 site allofmp3.com you may want to investigate whether or not your transaction went through Chronopay as they might have retained a copy of your records *cough* *cough*. Krebs outed this guy in the first report and Vrublevsky tried to play it off like someone higher was trying to drag his name through the mud for political reasons. I don't need anymore accusations: Vrublevsky's a crook.

Re:Ah, Yes, Our Good Friend Pavel Vrublevsky

[phantomfive]

Russia has its own style in business, government and crime. Misha Glenny covered it well in his well researched book McMafia. He quoted James Woolsey who portrayed it succinctly:

If you should chance to strike up a conversation with an articulate, English-speaking Russian in, say, the restaurant of one of the luxury hotels along Lake Geneva, and he is wearing a $3,000 suit and a pair of Gucci loafers, and he tells you that he is an executive of a Russian trading company and wants to talk to you about a joint venture, then there are four possibilities. He may be what he says he is. He may be a Russian intelligence officer working under commercial cover. He may be part of a Russian organized crime group. But the really interesting possibility is that he may be all three--and that none of those three institutions have any problem with the arrangement.

Things are different over there.

not all bad

[Lord Ender]

Someone who has successfully operated a spam business will understand spam a lot better than someone who has not.

Re:I see.

[Locke2005]

That's the same kind of "moral equivalence" that labels the Gulf oil spill as "Obama's Katrina". It's not the same thing!