Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Canadian Spammer Fined Over $1 Billion

Posted by timothy on from the get-poor-quick-scheme dept.

innocent_white_lamb writes "A man has been fined ONE BEELYUN DOLLARS (yes, really) for sending 4,366,386 spam messages that were posted on Facebook. He was fined $100 for each message, and including punitive damages he now owes $1,068,928,721.46. A ruling by a US District Court judge in San Jose, California has now been upheld by the Quebec Superior Court (the defendant lives in Montreal)."

2 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good. by Garwulf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's even worse than that in this case. According to the article, he was compromising other people's accounts using fake websites, and then using those accounts to send his spam so that it would appear to be from their friends. So, it's not just spam in this case - it's fraud and identity theft.

    If it were up to me, he would also be going to jail.

    --
    Robert B. Marks
    Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
  2. Re:I don't feel sorry, but... by TheLink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    RTFA: "According to Facebook, Guerbuez fooled its users into providing him with their usernames and passwords. One method was the use of fake websites that posed as legitimate destinations."

    "After Guerbuez gained access to user's personal profiles, he used computer programs to send out millions of messages promoting a variety of products, including marijuana and penis-enlargement products, Facebook said."

    How much damage is that to you?

    Whatever the damages are, to me the punitive fines of USD100 per user seem fair to me. So he should still be looking at USD400+ million in fines.

    I don't think you want to encourage "economies of scale" when it comes to crimes.

    So if you figure out a clever but illegal way to paste ads on 4 million people's front-doors, you should only be fined the same amount as someone who does it on one door?

    Yes those people "could always remove the crap on their front door", but if you keep letting people get away with it, you end up with crap permanently on your door.

    You do city-scale damage, you get city-scale fines. Sounds fair to me. Don't like it, think before you do it.

    It's like those littering fines. Yes it doesn't cost that much to remove one coke can from the ground, or a discarded wrapper.

    I don't see why someone should get a smaller fine per offense than a "normal person" just because they chose to make money in a way which involves littering on a massive scale.

    --