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Spam King Wallace Indicted For Facebook Spam
itwbennett writes "Notorious spam king Sanford Wallace is facing federal fraud charges for allegedly breaking into the Facebook accounts of 500,000 victims in 2008 and 2009 and using the stolen credentials to post 27 million spam messages. The charges are outlined in an indictment, filed July 6 but made public Thursday after Wallace turned himself in to federal authorities. If convicted, Wallace could get more than 16 years in prison."
Isn't that asshole dead yet?
I thought Spamford had turned over a new leaf? Giving interviews, promising no more spam.
Good heavens. A spammer lied to us.
John
Accessing half a million facebook accounts must have subjected him to more torment than I could bear.
Wallace, the guy with a $5M fine in 2006... something's rotten with the legislation/judicature if he is able to ignore the penalties
Is he never going to learn the difference between right/wrong?
Throw him in jail and fill the door lock with epoxy resin.
No sig today...
Here's his business model:
Wallace, 43, allegedly used a phishing attack to steal usernames and passwords from victims and then used the stolen credentials to post spam to victims walls, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Wallace allegedly made money from the scam by driving Web traffic to affiliate marketing companies, who pay their members by the number of clicks they can deliver to websites.
So, he basically posed as other people, and those people's friends click on those links put there by Wallace thinking their friends put them there, and then Wallace gets paid.
The other thing is the people "advertising" were doing business with Wallace. They didn't check him out with a simple google search? Or did they know and not give a shit because they're that desperate for traffic?
...of manually filtering out spammy emails from non-spammy ones. It'll be like community service. Sure it won't do much in practice but it'll teach him how the rest of us feel when some new spam gets through the filter.
I read your title as an imperative to read it in a certain way, vice the past tense of read. I must say I was disappointed when I read your post.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
And this in turn why blacklist entries associated with these individuals and corporations should be permanent. It's kind and noble of people to try to forgive them, to give them yet another another another chance; but it's extremely naive and stupid.
I think he may be in for an ass kicking -
"Wallace has also been sued by Facebook, which won a $711 million civil judgement against him. As part of that judgement, he was banned from Facebook, and the criminal indictment accuses Wallace of contempt of court for allegedly logging onto the social network during an April 2009 Virgin Airlines flight from Las Vegas to New York. Wallace also allegedly set up a Facebook profile in January of this year under the user name David Sinful-Saturdays Fredericks."
Either way he should be banned forever from the interwebs for all our sakes. If ever there was a case to throw the book at someone, this would be it.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Yes.
which is totally what she said
Well, I'll put it this way: I wouldn't want my taxes paying for his jail cell for that long.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Seems quite high
The law has this thing about repeat offenders...
No sig today...
I bet if you met him in person you'd be setting up a direct debit after ten minutes listening to his exploits...
No sig today...
Time and again, these simple rules have proven themselves. Too many fallen spam kings, too many spam kings sitting in jail or just plain bankrupt.
... was negligible at best. Throwing spammers in jail doesn't solve the spam problem. While I support seeing something done, we need to be careful not to go patting ourselves on the back whenever we punish a spammer.
And no, murdering them won't help, either. Plenty of people voice support for murdering (or executing) spammers but that won't help the case. We've seen spammers murdered in Russia and that didn't make a difference; indeed some spammers even moved to Russia to fill the void.
Until we actually go after the root economic problem behind spam, we won't see a real change in the matter. Spam is an economic problem, and requires an economic solution.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Um, he has no convictions.
From TFA:
I settle for ass-pounding in prison.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Send Bubba some instant cialis tabs and penis enlargement pills. We don't want Wallace disappointed in Bubba's size or performance.
Fight Spammers!
Wallace, 43, allegedly used a phishing attack to steal usernames and passwords from victims and then used the stolen credentials to post spam to victims walls
So people were stupid and fell for this crap, that sucks and all, but i get emails every day about how I won a lottery overseas or how there's some princess in another castle.
I use half a brain cell and ignore them, so again I ask, what law is in place that makes tricking people illegal? I see CONgress doing that all the time...
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Stories always show the highest possible prison term. Likely, he could trade a plea for much less time but I don't think he should be allowed to avoid some decent amount of jail time (a couple of years at least).
No matter where you go, there you are.
Not just spamming through email, unauthorized access to 500,000 accounts, then spamming their walls. Those are 3 different crimes I assume the accessing 500,000 accounts is most of this sentence. The 17 years is the sum of those three acts.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
to whom can we make donations to ensure he is put in a cell with a extremely large (in both senses of the word), horny, sex offender? Death to all spammers!
As much as I hate spam, I have major problems with the guy going to jail for 16 years for sending emails that people don't want to receive. The penalty is way out of line with what he did.
I'll concede that if I had personally been bitten by him there's a damn good chance I'd agree with you.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
On numerous occasions when being hauled into court by the FTC he has settled and "promised" to not do this type of shit again.
Several times the massive fine that the FTC wanted was suspended, provided he obided by the settlement agreement.
I would really expect that the justice department would have used these failures to get an even longer sentence.
He still owes myspace millions after he got sued by them and lost
So while you are technically correct in that this is the first time he is facing criminal charges, he could have and should have been brought up on criminal charges for violating the settlement agreements.
The hosting companies, ISPs, credit card processors and banks that make it possible to actually make money off of spam.
Sure, some of it is purely criminal -- viruses, malware, etc. But that's more easily filtered and is something of a seperate problem.
The problem with just going after the "spammer" is that the life support system that makes it possible to be a spammer and actually make money off it stays intact and they just become the vendor to the next douche-bag spammer.
A RICO prosecution targeting everyone involved would be highly beneficial. Even if the above accessories to spam weren't actually prosecuted, an FBI investigation involving grand juries, subpoenas and a host of negative publicity might have a deterrent effect on its own, discouraging those businesses from dabbling in spam businesses.
If spam can be pushed further to the margins, its less profitable and higher risk. From a technical perspective, it makes it easier to identify ISPs and hosting companies willing to accommodate it, making them easier to null-route or block, and thus raising their costs for access.
You may not be able to stop spam 100%, but you may make it economically non-viable.
to a nicer guy...
I suggest some western justice.
Public stoning??
Rick B.
He's sending unwanted messages to people with whom he has no business relationship in order to collect money from people paying for eyeballs. How is that not spam?
In the "cyberbullying" case when a girl committed suicide, EFF intervened on the bad woman's behalf, saying it would be a slippery slope to tyranny if federal law were used to make sites' Terms of Service enforceable by law. I disagreed then, but it will be even worse if EFF opposes this prosecution on the same grounds and defeats it. Forums need to be able to have rules and enforce them, or no one will have real freedom of speech except the spammers.