Fighting malware and spam
Legal success against notorious spammers
Atkinson to pay huge fine; Ralsky to spend years in prison.
US judges have sentenced two notorious spammers to a huge fine and years of imprisonment, respectively.
Yesterday, a US Federal judge sentenced Lance Atkinson, a New Zealand citizen residing in Australia, to a fine of more than 15 million US dollars.
Atkinson was the ringleader of a group known as Herbal King that used botnets to send billions of messages spamvertising cheap medicine. By using false headers and failing to provide both an opt-out link and a physical postal address, the messages violated the CAN-SPAM Act. Moreover, the group made false claims about the medicine they sold and about the security of transactions made on their website.
Atkinson's co-defendant, US resident Jody Smith, has been ordered to turn over almost all of his assets and faces up to five years in prison.
The news comes shortly after the announcement that another judge had sentenced Alan Ralsky - known as 'the Godfather of spam' - to 51 months in prison. Ralsky played a central role in a pump-and-dump scheme that attempted to increase the value of thinly traded stocks. In June, he pleaded guilty to his part in the scheme, that is reported to have made him $3 million in just 18 months.
More on the Herbal King case is at M86 Security here with the FTC's press release here, while The Register's report on the Ralsky case is here. The relevant entries in Spamhaus's Register Of Known Spam Operations are here and here, respectively.
01 December 2009
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