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.

Posted on 01 December 2009 by

Virus Bulletin