A Spamming Attorney Gets Sentenced To 40 Months 131
www.sorehands.com writes "While one spammer, Robert Soloway, gets released on probation, the Feds send another, Robert Smoley, to the slammer for 40 months.
I know about Smoley because I tracked him down, and beat him in court. Not only was he an attorney, he still has not lost his license, yet. The IRS contacted me as a result of seeing my web site, and I gladly assisted the IRS in tracking his business. He not only bounced a check on me, but stiffed his local counsel and one of his ISPs."
Man.. (Score:2)
What is it about Roberts?
And someone needs to teach the guy who wrote the website how to attach a .css
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They're Dicks.
Sorry, OP was asking for it.
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What is it about Roberts?
They're Dicks.
Richards are Dicks. Roberts are Bobs.
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Praise "Bob"!
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Praise "Bob"!
Kill "Bob!"
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No, that's Kill "Bill"! Which is William.
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You must be new here.
Simple Mail Filter (Score:1)
Just block "Robert S.*ol.*y".
Attorney... sentenced... (Score:5, Funny)
Victory.
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A judge is an attorney with a promotion.
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what do you call one attorney thrown in jail?
a good start!!
BADUM-TISH.
Not for spamming (Score:5, Informative)
According to the linked Miami Herald article, he got sentenced for running an online pharmacy, not for spamming. Big change in tone of the article. Spamming just lead to some one being annoyed enough at the guy to help the IRS track him down.
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Yeah, the headline on Slashdot would tend to elicit rightful cries of "Is spamming a 'crime' worthy of taking several percent of someone's entire life span?", while the real article would elicit rightful responses of "Okay, so the guy was found guilty of running a prescription drug sales scam online".
Someone really needs to vet the sanity of articles before they make Slashdot, but after almost fifteen years, why start now?
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I'd say that a big spam campaign should have the same penalty as a single murder. Deleting a single piece of spam takes only a few seconds on the average, but even after spam filters, you have hundreds of millions messages that do pass through. Collect that together and they can easily take out a whole life.
Fake drug scams take out lives too, it is reasonable to assume a number of people affected will lose enough from their life expectancy to make a penalty equivalent to one for a murder fair.
I think meas
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So if you add up everyone who facepalmed after reading that post, the collected force would crush someone's skull, so clearly you should be going down for murder as well.
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Wouldn't it be assisted suicide?
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I'd say that a big spam campaign should have the same penalty as a single murder.
Why don't you go and fuck yourself to death with a cactus?
Spamming attorney Vs. IRS (Score:4, Funny)
I am conflicted.
Re:Spamming attorney Vs. IRS (Score:4, Insightful)
Spamming attorney is doing it because he's the unethical shit breaking the law.
IRS - collecting on behalf of Congress who can never ever live within their means - even when they use Hollywood bookkeeping to "balance" the budget.
The attorney is the shit here.
Any problems with the IRS you'd have to blame Congress for.
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You should not be. One spamming attorney avoiding paying taxes to the tune of millions means everyone else gets to pay more taxes to make up the difference.
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I am conflicted.
If the income tax were abolished and the IRS was disbanded, all the folks working there, not to mention the legions of people working in the tax preparation business, would make an immense contribution to society, instead of sifting through records and trying to satisfy the incoherent rulings of Congress.
The spamming attorney is doing it because he's got nothing of real value that anyone wants.
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Personally, I wouldn't help the IRS if they were trying to solve my mother's murder.
Well, not if you're the one that killed her, you incoherent fuckspace.
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Weird page, wonder what its for. Its excluded from being indexed by crawlers...
There's another trap named in the robots.txt file, but the link doesn't seem to work so I can't view it. Ah well.
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Fark Florida tag Likes This.
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Yes!
It's always Florida that these scams are run out of. The only time I ever lost money to a scammer, the guy was in Florida as well.
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no work ethic, and a bag-of-smoke, case-of-beer mentality hurtling towards Fridays...
You say that as though it were a bad thing.
All that, (Score:1)
Hey, attorneys invented Internet spam! (Score:5, Interesting)
From Wikipedia, "Laurence A. Canter and Martha S. Siegel were partners in a husband-and-wife firm of lawyers who on April 12, 1994 posted the first massive commercial Usenet spam . . . Canter and Siegel were not the first Usenet spammers. The "Green Card" spam was, however, the first commercial Usenet spam, and its unrepentant authors are seen as having fired the starting gun for the legions of spammers that now occupy the Internet." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_and_Seagal [wikipedia.org]
But this case seems to be more about wire fraud, than spam.
But still, thanks a lot Cantor and Siegel! You should have patented it! "A Method and Process of Sending Unwanted Advertisements to Everyone on the Internet, Which They Don't Want, and Don't need."
Where is there a patent troll when you need one? (Score:1)
When you wish to have patent trolls on spam, you don't get them.
late-comers (Score:2)
But still, thanks a lot Cantor and Siegel! You should have patented it! "A Method and Process of Sending Unwanted Advertisements to Everyone on the Internet, Which They Don't Want, and Don't need."
The PR industry [wikipedia.org] (c. early 1900s) is way ahead of them. And if Bernays had patented the technique, it would have expired long ago. Except for the Internet part. So you're right, they could have patented it. Except the patent would expire in 3 years. Unless someone could figure out a slight modification, or an iApp, that was worthy of another patent. Except that couldn't happen.
Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need. -- Will Rogers
Spam action doesn't get less useful (Score:3)
As long as there is money to be made from sending spam, spam will continue to be sent. The only way to end spam is to detach spammers from their revenue sources, period. This did not accomplish that so the spam will continue.
Not exactly true. (Score:1)
Ever hear of Al Capone [wikipedia.org]? They got him on tax evasion.
Last year, someone sent in a traffic ticket with a not guilty plea on it. The ticket had blood on it, and it led to a major drug bust [nytrafficticket.com]. Or a
traffic stop for an open alchohol container lead to a
heroin-trafficking arrest
Many times, the investigation started as one thing, but led to others. From my read of the case docket is that the IRS was investigating Smoley for failing to file tax returns and Silverstein's web site and chat led them to the internet phar
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When it comes down to it, this is REALLY a story about the monopoly racket run by big pharma - and the restrictions they have had enacted in law, using government to protect their turf. They use an excuse of "public safety" for this, and involve the DEA.
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If they take out ALL guys like this one, then drug spam will be gone.
Except that using this method you will never take out all the drug spammers. Not in an infinite amount of time, as long as nothing else changes and the human race exists. Spammers don't give a shit about US laws because most of them don't live or operate here anyways.
The only way to stop spam is to address the root cause of spam, and this method doesn't even move in the right direction to do so.
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Spammers don't give a shit about US laws because most of them don't live or operate here anyways.
10 worst spam havens [spamhaus.org]. Currently the US in first place is almost 3 times as bad as second place China. Even worse, a lot of the spam coming out of China is sent on behalf of spammers residing in the US.
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It is related, he advertised his illegal drug business with spam. So, him out of the equation means one less advertiser. If they take out ALL guys like this one, then drug spam will be gone.
If the spammers are making money out of this, then someone is paying money for their service. It seems to me morally on the same level as people selling stocks and derivatives.
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Is spam really an epidemic? We have simple means to block almost all spam, so that the average person probably sees maybe a dozen spam messages per year. If everyone is inoculated against something, so nobody is thereby being infected with said virus, is it really still an "epidemic"?
Re:Spam action doesn't get less useful (Score:5, Informative)
Is spam really an epidemic?
Yes, it is
We have simple means to block almost all spam
But we pay a nontrivial cost for those filters. Even if you only use gmail for email, and you trust the "free" google filters, you are still paying for them. The cost is passed down to the consumer to pay for bandwidth, CPU time, storage space, and of course updates to filter rules.
If everyone is inoculated against something, so nobody is thereby being infected with said virus, is it really still an "epidemic"?
That is not a fair comparison and I'll tell you why.
When we began inoculation against polio, we eventually wiped out the virus from the main population. The virus could not spread and could not infect (of course now it may be coming back but that is a different situation). The cost of polio dropped to almost nothing because in the developed world people no longer were infected by the virus.
On the other hand, people all over the world are constantly paying the cost of spam. Just because they don't see (much of) it doesn't mean it no longer exists. Spam still consumes bandwidth, storage, and CPU time. And of course we need to also consider the false positive rate of spam filtering; the lost productivity and economic progress that we pay for as a result of legitimate email that is errantly thrown out as spam by filtering techniques. Those who believe in filters have to update their filters because the spammers are constantly finding new ways to get around them. Even if the average person sees very few spam emails in a year, it doesn't mean they don't have to pay for them.
And the fact that so many people are oblivious to what spam costs them may in some ways be even worse.
So in other words, yes. Spam is still very much an epidemic. It will cease to be an epidemic when spam is no longer sent; regardless of whether or not it is viewed.
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We have simple means to block almost all spam
But we pay a nontrivial cost for those filters. Even if you only use gmail for email, and you trust the "free" google filters, you are still paying for them. The cost is passed down to the consumer to pay for bandwidth, CPU time, storage space, and of course updates to filter rules.
We pay for inoculations as well. They aren't free and often are not paid for by the individual being inoculated. If you starve it out, the problem will go away and that is MUCH more feasible than targeting thousands of amorphous spammers around the globe (often in places where they are not reachable by any punitive means).
If everyone is inoculated against something, so nobody is thereby being infected with said virus, is it really still an "epidemic"?
That is not a fair comparison and I'll tell you why.
When we began inoculation against polio, we eventually wiped out the virus from the main population. The virus could not spread and could not infect (of course now it may be coming back but that is a different situation). The cost of polio dropped to almost nothing because in the developed world people no longer were infected by the virus.
On the other hand, people all over the world are constantly paying the cost of spam. Just because they don't see (much of) it doesn't mean it no longer exists. Spam still consumes bandwidth, storage, and CPU time. And of course we need to also consider the false positive rate of spam filtering; the lost productivity and economic progress that we pay for as a result of legitimate email that is errantly thrown out as spam by filtering techniques. Those who believe in filters have to update their filters because the spammers are constantly finding new ways to get around them. Even if the average person sees very few spam emails in a year, it doesn't mean they don't have to pay for them.
And the fact that so many people are oblivious to what spam costs them may in some ways be even worse.
So in other words, yes. Spam is still very much an epidemic. It will cease to be an epidemic when spam is no longer sent; regardless of whether or not it is viewed.
I don't see a significant difference from the inoculation metaphor. Like a virus, spam only continues to "spread" if it continues to find purchase within a host. Or, rather, to be viewed a
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We pay for inoculations as well. They aren't free and often are not paid for by the individual being inoculated.
Actually there are many cases where your second statement is untrue. The direct cost of inoculation has plummeted due to several factors in the past few decades, such that individuals can afford the cost of some inoculations directly.
If you starve it out, the problem will go away and that is MUCH more feasible than targeting thousands of amorphous spammers around the globe (often in places where they are not reachable by any punitive means).
The problem is you cannot starve out the spam epidemic, if that is what you want to suggest. At least not by any filtering method. Filters will never end the spamming epidemic because the spammers will always find ways around them and other real costs of filtering will con
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> rather than trying to stick some kid in pound-me-in-the-ass hard-core prison, for writing a script that spams a bunch of crap to a million accounts.
Writing a script is not a problem, you can do what you want with your own resources, however it gets more complicated when you involve my resources (bandwidth + time) and resources I pay in part for (ISP staff handling the mail servers, the bandwidth my ISP needs to handle the torrent of spam in addition to legitimate traffick).
This conviniently excludes th
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So in other words, yes. Spam is still very much an epidemic. It will cease to be an epidemic when spam is no longer sent; regardless of whether or not it is viewed.
Spam will disappear once mankind has transcended capitalism, there is a near infinite amount of resources to be shared around, and greed is no longer a meaningful concept.
So I'm guessing not in my lifetime.
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So in other words, yes. Spam is still very much an epidemic. It will cease to be an epidemic when spam is no longer sent; regardless of whether or not it is viewed.
Spam will disappear once mankind has transcended capitalism, there is a near infinite amount of resources to be shared around, and greed is no longer a meaningful concept. So I'm guessing not in my lifetime.
By that metric, it will likely never happen, being as we have lately been more inclined to move towards capitalism than away from it.
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Is spam really an epidemic? We have simple means to block almost all spam, so that the average person probably sees maybe a dozen spam messages per year. If everyone is inoculated against something, so nobody is thereby being infected with said virus, is it really still an "epidemic"?
Part of living in the States is that we don't know what _real_ epidemics are, just like we don't know what _real_ poverty is like.
A better analogy would be water quality, which may not be an epidemic, but is pretty damned close. If you go to a third world country, your body will build up a tolerance to the local water, after several rounds of diarrhea. But it's not real immunity, it's just your system constantly pouring on resources to fight the infection. You basically just get used to being sick.
We've all
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Is spam really an epidemic?
Even the most conservative estimations range around 80 percent of all emails being spam. So, yes, it is.
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These anti-spam crusaders are getting annoying. Seriously, people have nothing better to do with their time. They fancy themselves nothing short of Nazi hunters. Get a spam filter or open a gmail account.
I can't possibly imagine how anti-spammers are annoying anyone other than the dirtbag spammer themselves. And really... Nazis? Please. Your strawman argument amounts to less than even a good net trolling.
Personally, I applaud Mr. Silverstein's actions. I'm glad there's someone out there with the guts to go after these thieving scumbags.
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Spamming is a technical problem with a technical solution. On a personal level, I feel deeply suspicious of people who take it upon themselves to act in what they assume might as well be my best interests. There are laws controlling spam and there are law enforcement agencies (God knows the US has no shortage of those). Silverstein should find a new hobby, like suing his neighbors for not trimming their lawns on time or failing to scoop dog shit.
Your post advocates a
(X) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or colle
Damn You! (Score:1)
You bastard, now where am I gonna get my Viagra? There goes my prime tail.
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Re:Why is spam evil? (Score:4, Informative)
For starters, all that spam is basically junk mail where the sender didn't pay any postage. It's an abuse of the system in a lot of ways:
1) the strain it puts on the network (all those e-mails take up a good chunk of space)
2) the strain it puts on the mail servers (both in terms of processing to remove junk mail and in terms of hard drive space)
3) the fact that a significant portion of spam is sent by botnets without the users' knowledge
As to why people on /. hate it more... just think of how many people on this site have to spend hours trying to fix/update/manage their server's spam filters.
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just think of how many people on this site have to spend hours trying to fix/update/manage their server's spam filters.
Just think how many people have jobs because of it. But yeah, I get your point. It would make more sense for everyone if we further curtailed speech and laid off a bunch of IT guys.
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Er... there aren't many people who deal exclusively with spam filters...
And, really, that's like saying we shouldn't try to prevent rape and murder because they give people jobs (in the form of police officers, judges, prison guards, et cetera).
Just because something creates jobs by existing doesn't mean that it's a good thing...
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The poor suckers who have their email server compromised will inevitably be blacklisted by their ISPs. This will effectively prevent any mail from successfully being sent out to recipients. This means that the legitimate email server will no longer be able to send any mail, or any mail of their customers' behalf until the victimized server can be cleaned of malware on their server, and the owner can convince their ISP and anyone else who has cut them off to trust them again enough to accept email from the
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Perhaps I am in the minority BUT...
Can someone explain to me why precisely spam is so serious an offense as it would appear to slashdot users?
Someone once said: "people can forgive who hurts them, but not who pesters them".
Huh? Nonsense! (Score:1)
When you offer email service to someone else and they sign up for stuff don't get upset when they receive an email they asked for.
Huh? If someone signs up for an e-mail, then it is not spam.
However, if I sign up for one thing, it is does not authorize everyone else in the world to e-mail me. Buyig a list is not buying permission.
Inserting an '@' in my e-mail address does not indicate that I want marketing material from every insurance lead generator in the world.
If Charlie Sheen gives me Denise Richards [deniserichards.com] telephone number and address, does that give me permission to spend the night with her?
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The last part is why I feel most people hate it. They're simply jealous.
Actually, you're an idiot. They hate you for the same reason most people hate lawyers. You are bottom-feeding scum who contributes nothing of value to society, and in fact takes value out of society. If you were paid according to what you actually produce, you would have to give us all money to keep doing what you do. But, alas, that is capitalism.
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For what it's worth I do get advertising that I've subscribed to, and absolutely
Spammers vs. the IRS (Score:2)
Good job I didn't scroll all the way down (Score:1)
Good and bad. (Score:1)
Spammign is always bad, Internet pharmacys are a blessing.
“The Smoley drug trafficking organization fed the habits of drug seekers while its members chose profits over the health and well-being of those customers,” said DEA special agent Anthony
How does giving people meds they cant get cause they cant afford to go to the doctor hurt patients. Yes, some will overdose, Darwin takes care of that. People overdose on Ibuproifn all the time. As long as hes really shipping the medications requested I
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And since "they" (internet "pharmacy") choose to ignore the rules about how to properly check the person doing to ordering actually 1. has prescription 2. is the person to whom the medicine has been prescribed you might want to think about what other rules they choose to ignore for their profits.
For example: using reputable suppliers that actually deliver what it says on the box.
Also since their customers are not acting exactly within the law themselves it's all too tempting to just send them whatever cheap
Anyone try reading the rest of his website? (Score:2)
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The short form of his side of the story:
His attempt to get professional medical help resulted in him being fired. He sued his employer and won. The lawsuit got nasty. Make that, "lawsuits".
His employer was bought by a larger company, which was then bought by Mattel. Despite new lawyers, the lawsuits stayed nasty.
He posted everything on his website. More lawsuits occurred.
LOL (Score:1)
attorney can't get himself out of a 40 month conviction for spamming.
find a new day job.
"Member in good standing" (Score:2)
Well that explains it (Score:1)
Oh, so that's why I've been getting all those penis enlargement spam mails? The spammer is a lawyer, aka a big dick.
Website told me to leave before I was finished... (Score:1)
The "history of the lawsuit" page was interesting reading, but while reading I followed a link and was told in no uncertain terms that I was to leave the site immediately... I take it he won in the end?
huh? (Score:2)
I'd have thought an attorney would act as his own counsel.
2 dicks with one std (Score:1)
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Aren't you that Time Cube guy?
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Aren't you that Time Cube guy?
No, it's not centred.
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So you were doing work for a spammer and now you're suddenly all holier-than-thou because he didn't pay you?
I guess you've made a few calls to the BSA in your time, too.
Read the article much?
The payments were for a court-ordered judgement.
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I'm starting to think you're trolling, as you're coming across as deliberately dense, but here ya go. [barbieslapp.com]
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Well executed troll. Minimum effort, maximum gain.
Re:bounced checks? (Score:4, Informative)
He sued the spammer and won.
The spammer wrote a bad check to him as payment.
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Indeed. That's the impression I got as well. Must have been awfully painful, based on the tone of the post.
Re:idiotic laws (Score:4, Informative)
He was running an illegal online pharmacy.
The writer of the article had previously gotten a judgment against the guy for spamming.
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It certainly can't be "easily" filtered. It also costs money to people running mail servers and generally puts strain on the net. How about you just don't spam, eh?
The point is that it's annoying, but then so is unwanted paper junk mail, but no one thinks mailshot providers should be sent to prison.
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The sentences in the USA are often insane. In some states, you even can get a lifetime sentence just for shoplifting, if you are caught the third time. Yes, this is idiotic, because it is known for a long time now, that maximizing the punishment for a certain offense does not keep anyone from committing that offense. The reason is that people usually think that they will not be caught. So, the solution is not to punish harder, but to increase the fear of getting caught.
IIRC back in time when abductions of c
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I know you are trolling, but, stealing millions of dollars 0.1 cents at a time is still stealing millions of dollars.
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You don't remember the /. story about Russia's most prolific spammer a couple of years back.
Hint: it was an obituary / whodunnit
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