'Spam King' Sanford Wallace Sentenced To 2.5 Years In Prison For Facebook Phishing Scam (bbc.com) 56
Xochil writes: Sanford Wallace gets a two-year prison term and $310K fine on charges of fraud and criminal contempt for sending over 27 million spam messages to Facebook users. Sanford Wallace has made a name for himself over the course of the last several years. In 1998, the "Spam King" announced he would put an end to spamming on his part, instead resorting to a new scheme in which ISPs would be paid to receive the mail. Flash forward to 2004, the Associated Press reported that a judge issued a temporary restraining order against Wallace for alleged spyware distribution. Last August, Wallace admitted to compromising around 500,000 Facebook accounts, using them to send over 27 million spam messages through Facebook's servers, between November 2008 and March 2009. While he could have been sentenced to as many as 16 years in prison, he was only sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison and five years of supervised release. In addition, Wallace was ordered to pay about one cent for every message sent or about 60 cents per account compromised, totaling $310,628.55 in restitution. The phishing scam consisted of Wallace automating the process of signing into a Facebook user's account, retrieving a list of their friends and sending them each a message that encouraged them to log into a website. The website would trick users into divulging their Facebook username and password before directing them to an affiliate website that would pay him for the traffic.
Why are such criminals not "banned from the web"? (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, any high school kid that demonstrates it knows more about computers than the average CIO and hacks a server that was secured as well as a barndoor with a hay stack in front of it gets some verdict where he can't get near a computer any time soon.
Why is that waste of oxygen still allowed near anything using electricity?
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Who pooped in your breakfast cereals?
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Sanford Wallace?
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Actually, when it's out on parole, restricted computer access is part of the conditions.
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seriously. How is that not half a million CFAA violations?
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You know, any high school kid that demonstrates it knows more about computers than the average CIO and hacks a server that was secured as well as a barndoor with a hay stack in front of it gets some verdict where he can't get near a computer any time soon.
Why is that waste of oxygen still allowed near anything using electricity?
What I don't understand is once you've discovered your "business model" doesn't work you don't take what you've learned and try to sell your skills in a way that does't get you in trouble? even if your "skills" aren't viewed as particularly good by people who are techies you still could sell your knowledge about spam and how to fight it to corporations. He was one of the early spammers who who had notoriety when other's didn't and could have capitalized on that; after all along with the "Green Card Lottery"
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Lord Shojo says it best: "As long as the people at the table see a fellow player across from them, they'll tolerate you. A crooked player is a pain in the ass, but someone who refuses to play at all makes them start questioning their own lives and people HATE to think. They'd rather lose to a cheater than dwell too long on why they're playing in the first place. [giantitp.com]"
You and me, we aren't players because we have no cards. Drug lords aren'
Good Day (Score:1)
Well I'm going to call it a good day. I've been waiting 15 years to hear this news.
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Amen brother! He's been a thorn in my side for over a decade.
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Wow. #1563... OK, I believe it when you say over a decade. :)
Literally a thorn, or just *knowing* he wasn't already in jail/ having paid for his shenanigans? Or actually still causing trouble for you/your users?
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I'd say about 5 years actively causing trouble, and the rest of the time just knowing that someone like that existed in the world.
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I haven't heard that name in years. Kind of funny what he's been up to:
As of October 2003, Wallace was working as a DJ in New Hampshire, making weekly appearances at area nightclubs. Wallace performs under the name DJ MasterWeb.
In March 2006, the FTC filed a suit again against Wallace and SmartBOT for practices similar to the 2004 suit. This time Wallace and his co-defendants were ordered to pay $5,089,550.48 in fines.
In May 2008 Wallace and Rines were ordered to pay $230 million to MySpace by the L.A. District Court when they failed to appear for trial.
Wallace filed for bankruptcy in June 2009. On October 29, 2009, federal judge Jeremy D. Fogel awarded Facebook $711 million in damages.
In August 2015, Wallace pleaded guilty to electronic mail fraud and criminal contempt of court as well as admitting to mass spamming in 2008 and 2009. He also pleaded guilty to violating a court order to not access Facebooks' computer network.
In June 2016, Wallace has been sentenced to thirty months in prison and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution for bombarding Facebook users. U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Davila also sentenced Wallace to mental health treatment and five years of probation once he is released. Judge Davila barred Sanford Wallace of possessing or using any computer without the permission of the probation order.
He's been fined nearly a billion dollars, he's banned from creating MySpace profiles or accessing Facebook's network, and in general possessing or using a computer, he's a repeat offender with criminal contempt and only caught 30 months in jail. He probably deserves at least 5 years, with another 10 on probation. Maybe he'll go back to DJing.
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We don't need any more lists, lists invariably lead to scope creep. The sex offender registry was created to keep tabs on violent rapists and predators; now teenagers get added to the list for texting pictures to each other. The no-fly list was created to keep terrorists off airplanes; terrorists have still gotten onto airplanes while that faulty list has caught up innumerable innocent citizens (e.g. Ted Kennedy), now they want to use it to deny people their 2nd amendment rights. Or the most egregious examp
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Isn't that the real point of all these lists? To heap on punishment after punishment to satisfy bloodlust while paying lip service to that "cruel and unusual" thing?
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Governments invariably tend to scope creep, so by your stilted logic we should go back to living in caves. But then caves invariable tend to scope creep due to erosion, so I guess we should all kill ourselves immediately.
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You can't really DJ these days without a computer...
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I've been waiting that long to hear that someone has finally killed his worthless ass. Guess I have another month or two to wait. Sooner or later that piece of shit will piss off the wrong guy in the slammer and catch a shiv in the gut. I can't wait to read that news story.
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I can say, "This." to that!
Let's hope (Score:2)
Let's hope it involves daily beat-downs and extended stays in the prison infirmary.
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Comments like this cause me to despise humanity. This kind of attitude is one of the reasons that American jails are so bad.
Re:Let's hope (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course American jails are horrible. They're full of Americans.
There's a school of thought that making prisons uncomfortable is just desserts and even a deterrent for some..
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Comments like this cause me to despise humanity. This kind of attitude is one of the reasons that American jails are so bad.
Oh please, American jails are bad because they're bad, not because some guy like me fantasizes about Spamford Wallace getting his ass kicked.
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America is a democracy, it's jails are exactly how its citizens want them to be. And any political aide going through Slashdot to sum up focus group attitudes now knows how to get your vote.
Universal suffrage means "some guy like me" wears a crown on his head, a small crown but a crown nonetheless. Stop pretending you aren't at fault for your servants the politicians
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America is a democracy, it's jails are exactly how its citizens want them to be.
No. It's jails are how some of its citizens want them to be. Personally I'd be happier if jails/prisons provided more opportunity for actual rehabilitation and education and were more humane. But I can want that and still hope that Sanford Wallace gets his spammy little ass kicked.
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And any political aide going through Slashdot to sum up focus group attitudes now knows how to get your vote.
Lol, that's so stupid on so many levels, I hardly know where to begin. I doubt many political aides (if an) troll slashdot trying to figure out how to appeal to the masses based on throw-away comments like mine. If they are, the
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So you are in favor of extrajudicial punishment if you are suitably inconvenienced by the person in question? Is visceral response to a crime more important than society itself?
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So you are in favor of extrajudicial punishment if you are suitably inconvenienced by the person in question?
In the case of Sanford Wallace, hell yes.
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Just... chill. This guy has been hated for DECADES. A little internet-tough-guy celebration isn't likely to take physical form, and you know it. Can you deal with it if we hope for daily nookies (hard ones) and wedgies?
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You realize that this kind of legislation does not apply to our legislators?
When the right to carry is enforced in State Houses and Congress we may see some progress, but of course they have again exempted themselves.
Re:Spamford Wallace (Score:4, Insightful)
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In theory, if you contact the bulk mail senders, they have to take you off their lists as well, according to a postman I once asked.
Why not call him Sanford "Spamford" Wallace? (Score:2)
Sounds like a great nickname for him!
Do it enough and we can get it Google bombed!
Sanford "Spamford" Wallace
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Sounds like a great nickname for him!
Do it enough and we can get it Google bombed!
Sanford "Spamford" Wallace
1998 called and wants their meme back...
Wait, they didn't have memes in 1998!
Re:Why not call him Sanford "Spamford" Wallace? (Score:5, Informative)
"1998 called and wants their meme back...
Wait, they didn't have memes in 1998!"
Au contraire, we had a whole Beowulf cluster of them, naked and petrified with hot grits! And we had spamford wallace! In soviet Russia, only old people don't have memes!
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Are you for real?
That *is* his nickname. Google it.
E
My Buddy! (Score:1)
Back in the day one of Spamford's companies was driving me insane at home. A bit of detective work turned up a corporate contact number which actually turned out to be legit.
I was working IT for a telemarketing company at the time, and was also responsible for scheduling the outbound calls (and could monitor them as well). I temporarily modified the outbound calling unit so that number got a call every three seconds or so. At first they were indifferent, then they got angry, then finally they began PLEA
2.5 years (Score:2)
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It was Facebook in this case.
Try the same thing with some serious outfit - like CIA - and it would be a permanent re-location to some unmapped place.
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And whatever happened to 3 strikes laws?! If this guy isn't a poster boy for that, what is?
I think I speak for many... (Score:2)
When I say...
LART that pinhead.
This is why "Three Strikes" (Score:2)