Canadian Spammer Fined Over $1 Billion

innocent_white_lamb writes "A man has been fined ONE BEELYUN DOLLARS (yes, really) for sending 4,366,386 spam messages that were posted on Facebook. He was fined $100 for each message, and including punitive damages he now owes $1,068,928,721.46. A ruling by a US District Court judge in San Jose, California has now been upheld by the Quebec Superior Court (the defendant lives in Montreal)."

Now he's sending out spam..

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking for help paying for it!

Re:Now he's sending out spam..

[Tablizer]

You think that Nigerian prince will help him out?

Mod summary up

[Trip6]

One BEEYLUN DOLLARS! And Sharks with frickin' laser beams!

who knew?

[Wingman 5]

Who knew that Billion was spelled differently in Canada, maybe it is like color and colour.

He's not very worried

[Warll]

Don't worry that only works out to about twelve Canadian dollars.

It's a good news/bad news sort of thing

[jhp64]

From TFA: "He’s also barred from opening a Facebook account."

Re:I don't feel sorry, but...

[euphemistic]

I wonder how much the fine would have been if each spam message contained a song "owned" by one of the MAFIAA. You could generate a fine larger than the entire money supply of the whole world put together. This feels almost like a challenge now.

Re:um

[biryokumaru]

Am I the only one who always finds it oddly disturbing that the acronym for Supreme Court of the United States looks an awful lot like "scrotum?"

Re:Priorities..

[gmhowell]

Funny..a company was just fined a few million for (illegal) human experimentation of their bone anchoring glue which resulted in several deaths, but a spammer that didn't cause any physical harm or death is fined a billion dollars. Let's get some file sharers fined for more than the GDP of several small nations combined too, for good measure.

I hate spammers, but you're telling me that a few million spam messages are worth more than several LIVES and ILLEGAL MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION ON HUMANS?

Absolutely! They found a practical use for lawyers! A discovery of that magnitude is worth a Nobel or two.

He said 'experimentation on humans'.

Re: [subject removed]

[zblack_eagle]

Somehow parent seems strangely relevant

Re:Heh

[lavardo]

I'm sure a security software company could hire him with no problem.

Re:who knew?

[md65536]

I thought you spelt it "bouillon"?

Ah oui, but jusque en Kebecke. Here en le Montreal we often say "Ehpardonez moi, allez vous un bouillon dolare? Non? Moi aussi."

Re:Priorities..

[md65536]

Funny..a company was just fined a few million for (illegal) human experimentation of their bone anchoring glue which resulted in several deaths ...

Oh come on... it's ONLY their bone anchoring glue. I mean, do we even need that? They could have died from anything. Loose bone syndrome. Wandering pelvis. Smoking. Boneitis. All of these are natural causes.

Re:um

[dakameleon]

Two uneven halves make it up, they're generally wrinkly and balding, and tend to hang around not doing anything much useful most of the time.

Not too far off the mark?

Re:I don't feel sorry, but...

[pecosdave]

After he's used it not only has he lost his deposit I don't want it back.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I don't feel sorry, but...

[beav007]

It's a total of $1,068,928,721.46 USD, which is about $83.45 CAD.

Completely different.

Re:I don't feel sorry, but...

[Sulphur]

No, the real question is how the hell does $100 per message times 4.4 million messages equal $1 billion. $600 million in "punitive damages?"

Plus $400 million in Court Costs for all the copies they had to make.

Re:I don't feel sorry, but...

[someoneOtherThanMe]

"Great news, I got your fine reduced from $1 billion to $10 million"

..." and my bill will be just 5 % of this difference."

Re:Now he's sending out spam..

[Nefarious Wheel]

Have any better ideas? Hm, actually that's not a bad idea... What else does the guy have to lose?

Another billion dollars, perhaps.

Maybe we should tell the RIAA that he's been embedding Britney Spears songs as background music in his spam.

Re:Now he's sending out spam..

[Chrisq]

Dear Canadian court. Your BILLION DOLLARS is currently in an account in Bahrain. Unfortunately I am unable to get to it without bank fees of $5,000. If you transfer the money into this account .....

Re:I don't feel sorry, but...

[Chrisq]

Sorry, but "Quebecois" is the French spelling. "Quebecker" is the English one. There are still a few anglophones left in Quebec.

Making it the third most used language after Arabic and French

Re:I don't feel sorry, but...

[Chrisq]

I wonder if that's more than the number of AOL disks that have been mailed...

No less by about 50.

forget grey goo, I have this nightmare end of world scenario where all of the Earth's matter is converted into AOL disks

Re:I don't feel sorry, but...

[frostfreek]

The extra money goes to the Harmonized Sales Tax.

Re:who knew?

[GameboyRMH]

"Pardon me, are you going to a billion dollars? No? Me also."

I think you accidentally the whole thing.