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Spam King gets 4 years in Prison
By admin | July 24, 2008
Bloggers get spam everyday. Internet users get spam in their e-mails everyday. There are spammers everywhere. But who is the King of Spam?
Federal Prosecutors has given that distinction to 28 year old Robert Soloway of Seattle.
The United States Attorneys Office in Seattle obtained a federal grand jury indictment against Soloway for violating the Can-Spam Act by sending out millions of unwanted e-mails and for fraudulent misrepresentations to potential advertising customers.
According to the indictment, he sent tens of millions of e-mails to advertise his company Newport Internet Marketing. He told potential clients that for $495, their advertising messages would be sent to 20 million e-mails or they could receive software that would allow them to send up to 80 million e-mails themselves.
Federal Prosecutors alleged that Soloway violated the Can-Spam Act by putting in deceptive title in his e-mail messages.
The program he used automatically substituted the e-mail recipient’s name for that of Soloway’s, to get around any spam filters on the recipient’s computer.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Soloway sent more than 90 million e-mails in just three months through two servers. His July 22, 2008 sentencing capped guilty pleas in March to single counts of e-mail fraud, mail fraud and tax evasion.
During his sentencing, Soloway told Federal District Court Judge Pechman, “I take full responsibility for everything I’ve done. I am sorry for all the people that got the e-mails.” Judge Pechman asked Soloway why he continued with his spamming after a civil judge ordered him to stop spamming.
Soloway replied, “I was used to living a certain lifestyle, and I tried to maintain it. I tried to live beyond my means.
“It was a new law. I thought I would find a loophole.”
Soloway’s spam scam produced an income as high as $120,000 in 2005, he said. But it was not enough to keep up with high spending habit.
“I built my entire lifestyle around a facade that was not really who I was,” Soloway stated. “I was so scared of losing it. I am very embarrassed and ashamed.”
The federal prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo to the judge that the court should send a message by imposing the maximum sentence of five years for e-mail fraud alone, the violation of the Can-Spam Act. Federal Prosecutors wanted about 9 years in prison for the punishment. Soloway was sentenced to four years.
“The government believes that it is important uniquely in this unprecedented e-mail fraud case to recognize and pronounce publicly, and emphatically, that fraud in e-mail is a serious crime,” Warma and Cohen said in a sentencing memo to the court. “The financial and societal costs of this crime are immense.”
Federal Judge Pechman had great sympathy for computer users who constantly receive spam by stating, it “spewed out … has an impact on everybody who has a computer, and there are some people who are poisoned by it, and there are others who are merely annoyed.”
Pechman called criminal spamming “new territory” in jurisprudence. “There is not much case law.” And she noted it’s close to impossible to accurately count the number of Soloway’s victims and to quantify the damage done.
“We have an emerging social problem,” said the judge. “The World Wide Web has given us a new criminal playground.”
Judge Pechman gave Soloway 60 days to report to prison so that he could get medical attention for his Tourette’s disorder, which often involves involuntary movements and verbal outbursts.
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Topics: spam |
