Spam King Busted by Secret Service 247
An anonymous reader writes "Adam Vitale, aka Batch1 aka Baxter, 25, of Boynton Beach, FL, and his partner Todd Moeller, aka M3rk, of New Jersey, are accused of sending nearly 50,000 pieces of spam e-mail to more than 1.2 million AOL subscribers.
US Secret Service agents used a confidential informant to hire Moeller and Vitale to deliver spam, which advertised a computer security product."
Mugshot (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mugshot (Score:2)
Re:Mugshot (Score:2)
His email addresses (Score:2)
vxgtrey@yahoo.com
gherjso@gmail.com
jtiwekw@hotmail.com
riwqoqop@yahoo.com
cheapmeds@gmail.com
sexysamantha@hotmail.com
etc...
Cell Location:M-S-08-B-22U-B (Score:2)
Re:Cell Location:M-S-08-B-22U-B (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mugshot (Score:2)
I think it might be time to pull another Alan Ralsky [wikipedia.org].
Who's with me?
Re:Mugshot (Score:2)
Re:Mugshot (Score:2)
Just wait until the Secret Service comes for you.
Re:Mugshot (Score:2)
Re:Mugshot (Score:2)
Because in Soviet Amerika, government spams you.
Just like in Democrazy Amerika.
The real reason they waited - a few Secret Service agents are former AOHell users, and "ain't payback a bitch."
Re:Mugshot (Score:2)
Secret Service? (Score:2)
Re:Secret Service? (Score:5, Informative)
Check here [treas.gov] to see all the duties of the Secret Service....among them, you will find:
You know... (Score:2)
Re:Illegal? (Score:2)
Do the math, 50,000 emails to 1.2 million customers, that is a grand total of 60 billion spams sent. You only send that volume of email via a massive botnet. You have to, in fact, because if one server tried to send 60 billion messages to AOL's mail servers, it would very quickly be blocked. Eve
Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Informative)
Oohhhh! (Score:3, Interesting)
It is about time that the authorities are starting to take a harder look at those thieves of computer ressources. I'm not only talking about the criminal botnet operators, but the "mainsleaze" spam senders.
But the true way of fighting spam is not nuking spammers per se, but rather nuking ISPs who cater to spammers, in any way, be it domain registrations, DNS service and plain web-hosting, both legit and botnets. This will make them think twice in not having a good, hard look at their abuses@* mailboxen.
Re:Oohhhh! (Score:2)
Re:Oohhhh! (Score:2)
Nuke the actual spammers. Spammers DO business in the US, since they spam the beejeeeezus of US internet users. They may be hosted abroad, but there is a money trail that goes back one way or another into the US, and this is where the FBI comes handy to do this to the spammers (NSFW: actual video of a guy having his testicles nailed to a board) [216.137.100.175].
Go after thier cash flow (Score:2)
Re:Oohhhh! (Score:2)
Re:Oohhhh! (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as a legitimate "spam list". Spam lists are **ALWAYS** full of unwitting recipients. Legitimate mailing-lists, on the other hand, only have addresses of people who have specifically requested to be included in **YOUR** (and YOURS alone - there is no such thing as a "legitimate" purchased list, because the people there HAVE NOT requested to be on it) mailing list.
They know that your lists are legitimate mailing lists because every single person on them have requested to be on them, and for the eventual complaint that seeps through, you can PROVE that the person has requested to be on it, because you have DUTIFULLY kept the actual request ON FILE.
Not always. (Score:2)
Even used MSDN-AA? It and many other services want an email address to sign up, and then will start with the box "Send me a buncha stuff in email" checked, which is pretty abhorrent.
Often times if you accidently didn't decheck a
Re:Not always. (Score:3, Informative)
Caveat emptor. This is what disposable e-mails are for...
Google is perfect, because the addresses are "plussed [claws-and-paws.com]", so you can add a special code ("pig.hogger+bullshit@gmail.com") to tag where you give your e-mail to, and if you see different junk coming in, you know very well who's the sleazy fucker who sold your e-mail. At th
Re:Where is the theft? (Score:2)
Theft. The good old deprivation of something you enjoy by an unauthorized party.
More clueful, now???
Re:Where is the theft? (Score:2)
Think about the poor bastard who got into an accident in rush hour, causing hundreds if not thousands of people to waste time. He would get sued for all he's worth. Telemarketers would all be put out of business.
The only thing they could really say was theft was bandwidth, since it is the only thing that can really be monitarily quantified. CPU cycles? How many were used, and how much is one CPU cycle worth? Disk space? It w
Re:Where is the theft? (Score:2)
When one of your fucking chickenboning lowlife are burdening a whole fucking network with your fucking penis enlargement ads, you are **STEALING** access to hundreds of the user's network.
How can you be so fuckingly clueless as not to realize that spammers are not bearing the full cost of the advertising they inflict on hapless users?
Perhaps you need to be clued-in [216.137.100.175] a bit (video of what should be done to spammers).
Re:Where is the theft? (Score:2)
Google "theft by conversion", "criminal conversion", or "trespass to chattel".
In brief - if you take someone's bike while they're at work, and put it back before they get off work - and the cops find you, you don't get out of j
Re:Where is the theft? (Score:2)
A chickenboning spammer!
What's the matter? Your lover can't get a big enough erection because your h3rba1 \/1agra doesn't work? Or is it penis envy of your part???
Secret Service? (Score:2)
Re:Secret Service? (Score:2)
My god, how many people are gonna ask that? Look, the Secret Service isn't just the president's bodyguard. They are the law enforcement arm of the US Treasury Department. Remember Elliot Ness, of "The Untouchables" fame? Treasury agent. The Secret Service investigates a lot of things, including credit card fraud and computer crimes.
Re:Secret Service? (Score:2)
To your point though, if you had asked me yesterday, I would have assumed it was FBI territory.
Services rendered (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess it is good that the Secret Service doesn't have to worry about entrapment rules. It's great to hear that spam is getting wiped out but at what cost - the government is now hiring people to do things that will get them dragged into court? Maybe if everyone (including you, everyone you know and the government) stopped hiring/buying the service then maybe I might receive a little less spam and that is the only way it will really cease being a problem.
You don't understand what "entrapment" means. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You don't understand what "entrapment" means. (Score:2)
By no means am I trying to say it's ok to spam, just trying to point out perhaps we shouldn't drop the guillotine before we know both sides of the story.
Re:You don't understand what "entrapment" means. (Score:2)
Hmm dosn't sound like his regular mode of operation...
I think he does. (Score:2)
It sounds like they did more than just posing as customers. Regardless, the moment they made an offer of cash for criminal services, they were entrapping -- inciting crime, creating criminals.
"This 'service' that the spammers were offering was their daily business. It was their regular mode of operation."
If that was a certainty, there would have been enough evidence to convict them already. I hate spam as much as the next
All depends on how it went down (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll also notice t
Re:All depends on how it went down (Score:2)
Well they could get them for posession (If they saw the drugs or whatever) but dealing is a much more serious crime so they usually want to get them for that.
Re:I think he does. (Score:2)
Doubtful. While most people may not be against "tagging" a building with a streak of paint if paid a million dollars, there are lots of crimes that are taken down this way that regular people wouldn't think of doing. Go to a person on the street and tell them you'll pay them a million dollars if th
Re:I think he does. (Score:2)
Most people also wouldnt believe that you actually intend to pay them to do such a thing (they would assume its some type of practical joke). Show them the cash, and make a downpayment and I have a feeling that youll get quite a few more takers.
Re:You don't understand what "entrapment" means. (Score:2)
Actually thinking about it, "normal" sounds like an extremely ambigious, dubious and plain out dangerous word to use here. Who defines normality? If the person did it, it was obviously normal for him, right?
Re:You don't understand what "entrapment" means. (Score:2)
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
Problem: Sex offender released from prison
Step 1: Distribute local elementary school address list
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit! (well, send him back to jail at least)
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
What, like that's some kind of new development? Do you not read the news?
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
People/companies use spam because it is cheap and it works. It is cheap because nobody owns the Internet. It works because people are stupid. Thus, the only way to eliminate spam is to re-architect the Internet in such a way as to make it cost-prohibitive to transmit large amounts of data, or prevent stupid people from buying products advertised by spam.
Wouldn't it be nice to outlaw stupid people? Imagine th
Stupid people (Score:2)
Easy, send them a spam for V1gr@ that contains a virus that prevents them from connecting to the internet again. If they click on the link in the letter then Uncle Darwin solves your problem!
Re:Stupid people (Score:2)
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
You got the wrong idea. The point is not if the person entrapped is a crook who only needs a big enough lure or not, the point is that the law enforcement is not supposed to be actively promoting and encouraging crime. It also is an easy cop-out for them as instead of catching crooks which commited crimes against citizens, now they create their own, thus in
Re:Services rendered (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
The cop, clearly. If I were a thug for hire (which you again seem to imply) I would not have "hit that guy" without pay. Chances are, "that guy" has no enemies who would pay me to do it. Ergo, no crime until the cop showed up.
You *DID NOT* have to do the action. The crime was you hit the person. Who hit the person? You did. Who created the crime of hitting the person? You did. I just don't
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
"In jurisprudence, entrapment is a procedural defense by which a defendant may argue that they should not be held criminally liable for actions which broke the law, because they were induced (or entrapped) by the police to commit said acts. For the defense to be successful, the defendant must demonstrate that the police induced an otherwise unwilling person to commit a crime. However, when a person is predisposed to commit a crime, offering opportunities to commit the crime is not entrapment"
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
Right. So in the example I was replying to, the supposed "thug for hire" had no predisposition whatsoever to whack random bystanders for free. Only the financial gain offer made by the cop incited him to do so. On the other hand, were he an "enforcer" of some gang, and the cop who posed as a member of that gang pointed out an "enemy" to be whacked, this would perhaps fit the "predisposition" conditio
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
I fail to see how it isn't entrapment for the Secret Service to do what they did.
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
That depends on what they did exactly. The article is, as usual, pretty much useless for determining that. It could be that they simply posed as one of the spammers' customers on some IRC channel, in which case there would be no entrapment, as that would satisfy the "predisposition" clause, providing that the police can show the prior pattern of behaviour in court.
In the "thug for hire" example I was discussing, the cop could
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
"In the United States, entrapment exists if the accused's main motivation was the offer made by the police. If the accused was more motivated by other concerns, such as financial gain, then it is not entrapment despite police actions."
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
That means financial gain other than that which the "offer" made by the police consists of. Otherwise the police "offer" could only be of booze, cigarettes, carrots, chewing gum and the like.
Re:Services rendered (Score:2)
My point was not in the reference to the actual incident in this Slashdot article but in response to the poster who was downplaying the very idea of entrapment. In the case of the spammers at hand, it is quite likely that no entrapment took place, if the police merely posed as one of the many customers of the crooks in question.
Good riddance to bad rubbish (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good riddance to bad rubbish (Score:2)
I disagree. Technology will help with spam, but a societal fix is important too. If you were thinking of spamming, the fact that a fellow spammer has just been arrested by the Secret Service might change your mind.
Yeah, I know, it'll just get moved overseas. Until people start to crack down on it there, too. I think the problem is mostly caused by the fact that there's been virtually no enforcement against spam. Now there is,
Re:Good riddance to bad rubbish (Score:2)
50,000 Spam to 1.5 Million Subscribers?! (Score:2)
AOL subscriber #1: Buy our very high
AOL subscriber #2: quality and cheap
AOL subscriber #2: viagra product! http:
AOL subscriber #4:
AOL subscriber #5:
Damn those evil geniuses!
Re:50,000 Spam to 1.5 Million Subscribers?! (Score:2)
article is ambiguous (Score:2)
Besides 50,000 emails is hardly enough to get you in serious trouble for spam.
Does spam pay? (Score:2)
I thought spammers were supposed to be living the lush life on our nickel.
Re:Does spam pay? (Score:2)
50K to 1.2M? (Score:2)
How to send 50k messages to 1.2M people: (Score:2, Informative)
For the sake of the demonstration, I'll pick smaller numbers. Send 2 messages to 5 persons, A, B, C, D, E.
1) Send message #1 to A, B, C.
2) Send message #2 to C, D, E.
It is not said that all 1.5M people received each of the 50k messages.
In spam emails, the From: and To: fields are often erroneous. In that case, the actual recipients are in the Bcc field. So, several people receive a same message that seems addressed to only one.
Other comment:
50k distinct emails to a total of 1.5M people [slashdot.org]
Maybe it was 50K **EACH** (Score:2)
SS investigates fraud (Score:3, Informative)
and also
Since 1984, our investigative responsibilities have expanded to include crimes that involve financial institution fraud, computer and telecommunications fraud, false identification documents, access device fraud, advance fee fraud, electronic funds transfers, and money laundering as it relates to our core violations.
These guys are spammers. If they've advertised p3nis enlargement pills, they've committed fraud and, according to the Secret Service they have jurisdiction over this area. Disclaimer: IANAL
Read for yourself: http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/mission.shtml [ustreas.gov]
Shenanigans! (Score:2)
Sounds like total bull to me, Why wasn't this picked up by any real news sources? And since when does the secret service care about spam?
Check your math (Score:2)
Re:Check your math (Score:2)
Re:Check your math (Score:2)
They probably test the AOL spam filters regularly, and rotate their hashbust text for each message group.
SPAM... that is so 90's (Score:2)
What's next? Secret Service going to bust up a bunch of bolshevics?
Actually they probably should, all of the good spam came from communist countries anyways who were probably just sending it to thumb their nose at our freedom of speech and our weight and erectile problems.
Lousy communists!
Mincing words? (Score:2)
Re:Mincing words? (Score:2)
I'm smiling as I picture: (Score:4, Funny)
Well, not quite (Score:2)
Who are these fraudsters? (Score:2)
I have to wonder how shaky the case here might be.
50,000/1,200,000==? (Score:2)
Each person got 0.0416 emails?
Or did they mean that 50,000 emails were sent to each of the 1,200,000 people? That'd be 60,000,000,000 emails total...
Am I just missing something here or is there some stupidity going on with these numbers.... Artifically making the numbers seem big by including the number of AOL subscribers?
Re:50,000/1,200,000==? (Score:2)
Re:50,000/1,200,000==? (Score:2)
Another reason NOT to use AOL (Score:2)
AOL really needs to get serious about their spam problem.
The new AOL revenue stream (Score:2)
AOL's New Business Plan
1. Sign up for free iPod
2. Receive Spam
3. Litigate!!!
4. $$$$$
it's that easy
Re:Another reason NOT to use AOL (Score:2)
That's it? I don't get it... (Score:2)
Maybe he didn't lobby hard enough (Score:2)
Poor department. (Score:2)
Interesting how applaud what we would resist...... (Score:2)
Given that the better solution is a secured way of transferring mail (and no, lets not argue the merits of each proposed solution here) still seems to be some ways off from widespread use, we're stuck with the laws.
I ask my fellow geeks here, if we wouldn't be up in arms against nearly any other bust in the realm of what peopl
Re:Have to ask? (Score:2)
Re:Have to ask? (Score:2)
Re:Have to ask? (Score:2)
Re:Have to ask? (Score:2)
Re:Have to ask? (Score:2)
Re:How can he be the spam king? (Score:2)
I think you'll find that's 50,000 pieces of spam (or part of that 50k) to each of the 1.2 million mail boxes - otherwise it'd be 50,000 pieces of spam to 50,000 mail boxes! (or was that intended solely as a [bad] joke?)
You thought wrong... (Score:2)
The Secret Service didn't have anything to do with protecting the President until 1894, and that wasn't actually official until 1902.
Re:Obligitory Office Space Quote (Score:2)
Bah, the Nigerian's just a Prince... (Score:2)
Of course, Junior's just been biding his time waiting in fevered anticipation of his daddy's demise...the sins of the son'll probably far outpace the sins of his father...