Spam Kings Plead Guilty, Are Headed To Prison
The war on spam is just as doomed as the war on drugs, but the FBI has won a battle, bringing down a bulk commercial e-mail ring that pimped Chinese penny stocks into unwilling inboxes. They also developed bot network that helped spam avoid detection.
West Bloomfield, Mich. residents Scott Bradley, 38, and Alan Ralsky, Bradley's 64-year-old father-in-law, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, money laundering and violating federal anti-spam laws, both face $1 million fines and up to six or seven years and change in prison.
"They got their man," Richard Stiennon chief research analyst at IT research firm IT-Harvest, told SCMagazineUS.com on Tuesday. "The majority of spam is produced by a very small number of people, but these guilty pleas send a message out to other spammers. They will take their money and run."
When Ralsky was originally indicted, stock spam stopped, Matt Sergeant, senior anti-spam technologist at MessageLabs, told SCMagazineUS.com on Tuesday.
Ralsky was one of the world's most prolific spammers for a long time, Sergeant said. But eventually the law caught up to him.
"It's illegal," Sergeant emphasized. "There are fines and consequences."
Many in the anti-spam community had almost given up hope that law enforcement would pursue spam operations, Sergeant said.
"This case shows that the FBI is keen on pressing and prosecuting violators," he said.
Our Nigerian friends who constantly offer us business deals, however, remain at large.
Guilty plea for Detroit "spam king" [SC Magazine]
(Photo: moxythecat)
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Comments:
Ahh, finally some good news! <3 Every day that a spam entrepreneur becomes a toilet wine aficionado is a good freakin' day. :)
People appalled that they are facing 7, and not 70, years in prison in 3....2....1....
Every time an issue touching on criminal justice comes up on the consumerist I'm shocked at how many people have the "lock them up and throw away the key; they should never see sunlight again!" mentality.
I think they should pipe the hamster dance song into their cells 24/7 for the duration of their sentence.
$1 million fine, and 7 years in jail?
I think that doesn't sound too bad... Out in 3 for good behavior. Wasn't he supposedly making like $500K a month?
@mizike: Yeah I'm not saying they should be in jail forever but 7 years then they are probably eligible for parole in 2 or 3 and you know they got enough money to pay the fines and when they get out then they will be back at it and just not get caught again!
I just don't see prison as a legit punishment for these guys. Just like I don't see it for recreational drug users. With the electronic surveillance we have today, house arrest with maybe wages garnered and no access to the internet indefinately perhaps. Prison should be reserved for rapists and murderers. Not someone sending spam emails.
@mizike: I'm with you. I was rather shocked by some of the responses in the Madoff thread. I mean I know they need to crack down harder on white collar crimes, but are all the "twang him from a tree" type threats really necessary? He made unscrupulous business deals, he didn't eat babies.
@youaredumb: I hope you are wrong about the $500k/month. I find it quite unsettling that there are enough people walking around gullible and/or foolish enough to fall for these SPAM deals for someone to become wealthy peddling it.
@mizike:
Yes, but these people show no remorse and are almost certain to just start doing it again once they're out.
Prison doesn't just exist to rehabilitate. It also exists to keep hardened criminals with no intent to change their ways away from the general public.
Yippy! What a relief. It's a start,
I think the only one who has benefited from these morons is designer Linzie Hunter, who has made the most wonderful hand drawn illustrations from the spam crap she's received.
Now, if only the robocallers....
@Saboth: There are different security level prisons for so-called "white collar" criminals.
You could make your same argument to keep Bernie Madoff out of prison. Prison is not just to segregate the offenders from the citizenry and (hopefully) rehabilitate them in the process, it's also a means of punishment.
Can't believe they're actually putting Ralsky away. That's awesome. I remember a story quite a ways back about him ...
But I think it's worth mentioning that he wasn't sentenced only for spamming. It might as well be described as a veteran con man and accomplices being sentenced for various "traditional" crimes and also spamming. Then again, he already had a criminal record ... maybe it will turn out that the biggest spammers are also practiced criminals in other ways?
@HiPwr:
I don't think prison really works as a rehabilitation mechanism. Simply locking people up doesn't make them "good". Besides that penalty being harsher than the crime, I also have concerns about taxpayer cost. It simply isn't logical to lock up people just because we can. Everyone wants to complain about taxes, but then they cheer each time we lock up someone for smoking a joint or sending out spam emails. It isn't free to keep people locked up.
@Saboth: @Saboth: White collar crime is actually pretty much the ONLY area of crime where long prison sentences serve as a powerful deterrent. Deterrence doesn't particularly work for violent crime, but white collar crime IS drastically deterred by the possibility of prison (probably because white collar crime is so premeditated and typically motivated by pride and profit, two things a prison sentence puts a real kibosh on).
Why can't we use an RIAA-approach? 1 year per spam. Simple.
@HiPwr: If people stopped buying the stuff in SPAM, then it would stop as the incentive for sending it would cease to exist.
They send out tens of thousands messages before they get someone who buys something, but when you can send several million messages every day, those sales add up quickly.
Also, this guy convicted actually didn't sell anything in his spam emails. The scam went like this: He would buy up a bunch of worthless stocks...all those penny stocks. He would then send out a billion or two emails pumping up those stocks. Most people wouldn't fall for it, but some people would actually buy up the penny stocks, because you could buy a whole lot of stock for a couple hundred dollars. After the stock price would double, or triple, he'd sell his stocks for a nice profit. Eventually, this bubble he created on these cheap stocks would pop and the people who invested in those companies would lose most, if not all, of their money.
why the picture of the turkeys? isn't spam made of spiced pork products?
Photo of pigs in a pen with a cop out front would have worked... good luck finding that one though, flickr pool is only so deep.
Well, he's in Michigan, what else can do??????????
@mizike: Put them in a cell, with a computer and a combination lock. Promise to email them the combination, but note that they'll have to figure out which of the millions of incoming messages is the right one....
@TinkishDelight: He didn't "eat babies", but he stole billions and ruined literally thousands of people's lives. Madoff did more damage to society than Jeffrey Dahmer.
Likewise, Bradley and Ralsky, the scumbags in this article, caused a damage of millions of dollars worth to the economy by wasting time. Sure, maybe they only wasted ten seconds of an individual victim's time, but multiply that by the millions of spam messages these scum sent out, and you've got a loss to society of several million dollars in wasted time and lost productivity.
I think we need a messaging protocol where the whole network knows who you allow or deny the right to email you.
Heehee... a pair of caged turkeys, indeed!
@golddog: where you'll spend the rest of your life with no conjugal visits! Except from some big guy you don't want one from!
If you look at the spam statistics on WikiPedia you will probably become just as angry I am at spam.
These are some numbers:
From 90-97% of all email sent is spam
Over 100 billion spam messages are sent per month
I once heard a guy at a restaurant talking about how he's a spammer and how great it is. To this day I regret not doing or saying something to that guy. Bastards. Next on the list, doorknob advertising aka: tangible spam.
Have their prison TV set up in such a way that they can watch 5 minutes of a show and then have to endure 25 minutes of commericials before the next 5 minutes of the show...
@mizike: I vote we skin spammers alive and then feed them feet first into a chipper shredder. Film it and then broadcast the process on national TV at 8pm local time. Sell raffle tickets and let people vote on how long they scream. Give prizes, and feed the remains to hungry fish.
That might send the correct message about how much we like spam.
@cristiana:
Probably about right. 82% of the email I received this year is spam, but that doesn't account for spam blocked by server-side greylisting.
I imagine the statistics are about the same for postal mail.
I despise having to explain to my grandma why she keeps getting viagra and porn e-mails. (got a filter now, natch)
But seven years? I'm sure his inbox will get filled with unsolicited male.
@RedSonSuperDave: Also your not taking into account all the IT infrastructure that has to be put into place just to filter spam and the amount of the internet bandwidth that it actually takes to send all this junk. I work in IT managing data centers you would be amazed at the systems you have to have in place to stop spam. The cost in the US is billions of dollars per year just to filter spam.
@Saboth: White collar crime is about the worst type of crime to a society. Honestly violent crime in the united states is really only an issue because our media over hypes it. Every single person here has been a victim of white collar crime even if you are unaware of it, relatively few are victims of violent crime.
So then you have to add every single person and/or email address that you ever want to receive any communication from, and then hope and pray that it doesn't block some important emails from coming through?
Sorry, but stringing up the spammers is still the best idea. Whitelisting causes the average person infinitely more trouble.
Wow, Alan Ralsky is an OLD name in the spamming business. When I was working an abuse desk back in 1999-2000, we were constantly finding and killing web hosting accounts he had set up, whack-a-mole style, with our company. Kind of surprised to find out he hasn't been in prison yet.
@vladthepaler:
I don't really have a problem with postal spam, as it is a sender pays system. With email spam, then the cost is borne upon the user, and the global network, and the sender pays almost nothing.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Federal offense. I would guess that it would be a federal prison.
@mizike: Some people just can't seem to grasp the scale when it comes to millions or billions of offenses. They see one offense as tiny, so many of those offenses put together must be merely small, right?
Those are the maximum sentences right? Ralsky will be out in a year or so on good behavior and back to it before long.
@Adam Stewart: Reminds me of an experiment I did once. I tracked all the SPAM emails for penny stocks to see if I could notice a trend. Then I would try to buy them and make money off of them buy getting in when the spam first started.
It was an exciting way to spend 100 bucks.
Is it federal PMITA prison? Please say it's federal PMITA prison!