Jailed Spam King Caught Conspiring to Kill Witness 290
An anonymous reader writes "Spam king Christopher William Smith, aka Rizler, is facing up to life in prison for conspiracy to tamper with a witness and up to 20 years for endeavoring to obstruct justice. The charges are based on an alleged phone call in which he threatened to have a witness or the witness' family killed to prevent them from testifying against him in an upcoming trial on drug and related charges.
His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Informative)
I could be wrong, but his spamming and his current indictment seem unrelated.
From the article:
"Although Smith allegedly built his pharmacy business from spam-related profits, it doesn't appear that Smith actually sent spam to advertise the pharmacy sites. Witnesses told investigators that he bought ads in magazines and had sales reps field calls at the Burnsville, MN offices of Online Payment Solutions."
And from a previous article [spamdailynews.com] on him, it would seem that he spammed stuff different from his pharmacy biz.
The latter seems to be the reason he tried silencing a witness, and it was for something that seems to be unrelated to his spamming biz.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Funny)
Or, should that be "outbox"
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Funny)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Funny)
It's an "Inbox" now!
Written by someone named TurdTapper, no less.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry
Cheers
Stor
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2, Funny)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Funny)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Insightful)
JOKES ABOUT THEM ARE. THAT'S WHY THEY'RE CALLED JOKES.
Sorry for the shouting. Clueless people raise my blood pressure.
Risking Godwin's wrath, but you brought it up... (Score:5, Insightful)
However: jokes about killing Jews are not funny if the point is to take the actual killing of Jews less seriously. Or to turn killing Jews into entertainment.
Likewise, in this case, if the joke was intended to relieve tension on the agreed horor of prison rape, I'd laugh. That wasn't the point. It never is. People really think prison rape is funny. In and of itself. But it's not. Real torment never is. It's also bad for society. It's bad for you.
Clueless people my ass.
Cheers.
Re:Risking Godwin's wrath, but you brought it up.. (Score:4, Insightful)
And to be clear: sympathy is not my motivation to dislike prison rape. There are at least three reasons why everyone should be against prison rape:
1. Nearly all criminals are released from prison eventually. If they have been raped they are more dangerous to society.
2. The rapist is experiencing power. Why is anyone in prison allowed the pleasure of feeding their abusive tendancies? See point #1.
3. A society that sanctions human rights violations is fundamentally a less healthy society. Violence anywhere begets violence everywhere. This has been shown over and over again throughout history.
On your tangent: people are not all sadists. How many consciously sadistic acts does the average person undertake per day? Assuming you're living in something that passes for a functioning society, I'd say virtually zero. And you believe this is all simply repression? Even the jerks I know don't seem to take pleasure in hurting, it's just a side effect of their being inconsiderate. In fact, nearly everyone I know takes efforts to avoid causing suffering of others.
Yet we can still laugh at a good Nazi joke. Get used to the complexity of people. Don't get hung up on one point and then paint everything black and white.
Cheers.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Funny)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
It's an inbox, since he'll probably be getting viruses this way.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Informative)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Virgin prisoners are state property. If you rape one, you've destroyed its value. That's why you should get 20 more years for it.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:3, Informative)
I went and looked up the Federal Sentencing Guidelines http://www.ussc.gov/2004guid/tabcon04_1.htm [ussc.gov] Turns out, for a raping another prisioner or even a correctional officer raping prision you get 32 points. (FYI: each crime is weighted on a point scale. Each crime has a base point and then you can get "extra credit" to increase the points based on the actual details of the crime.) If you are first time offendor serving a t
you're assuming charges are filed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You are one-hundred percent full of shit. (Score:3, Informative)
I must have imagined this one: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-17-pr
Ya know what? (Score:2)
"Ohhh, some people don't like you to talk like that. Ohh, some people like to shut you up for saying those things. You know that. Lots of people. Lots of groups in this country want to tell you how to talk. Tell you what you can't talk about. Well, sometimes they'll say, well you can talk about something but you can't joke about it. Say you can't joke about something because it's not funny.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you think it was funny in "Shawshenk Redemption?"
Would you think it was funny if this Slashdot story was about Kevin Mitnick being in prison? Would that bring things a little closer to home?
It's depressing enough that the whole country knows this happens while we sit idly by. It's even worse that it's a "nudge nudge, wink wink" kind of joke.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do people think it's OK to joke about this?
If Richard Pryor can joke about lighting himself on fire while freebasing or having a heart attack, I can damn well joke about prison rape.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Tragedy is when I get a paper cut; comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die. - Mel Brooks
Or, as South Park puts it 'Yay, AIDS is now funny!'
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:5, Insightful)
You really *can* joke about anything. It's fine if you don't find it funny (obviously), but saying it's shameful and depressing that people joke lightheartedly about a serious issue is always big buzzkill. It's the conversational equivalent of walking up to a group of people and taking a big shit right in front of them. Thanks for the... input. You're leading the thread in exciting new goddamned directions. Cause, you know, this is secretly a thread about the horrors of prison rape, and jokes are the perfect context for inserting unadulterated activism.
I'm not saying people who are against prison rape are extremists or something (given the high rate of incarceration in this country, we should *all* be against prison rape, more out of personal interest than anything else), but busting out with a big ol' conversational turd like that is in worse taste than the original jokes.
I mean, thanks. Prison rape is actually bad. Wow. I'm gonna devote some serious fuckin' thought to that, because it's just such a provocative statement. This is the kind of thing I have to think about on surveys, too. "In your opinion, is getting involuntarily boned in the ass by a violent felon whilst in prison on a drug charge a good thing or a bad thing?" Uhh... Umm... Crap. Let me think about that. I'll get back to you... Right after I read Slashdot!
Jokes, no matter how offensive or distasteful, are *not* an opportunity for you to point out how offensive something is. Jokes are very frequently funny *because* they make us feel awkward or offended. Unless you think that the people making these jokes are secretly *for* prison rape, your comment is totally unwarranted and pretty solidly off-topic.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:3, Funny)
See, it's all a big misunderstanding.
You're mistaking a spamming scumbag for a human being.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
I agree with you that it's depressing.
I think the solution is to make it part of the sentence. Literally.
They can have separate facilities
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Some of them might be there on a drug charge. Or a hacking charge.
Some of them aren't even guilty.
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:3, Insightful)
#2: Jail is not prison.
A Mental Image I Know You'll Like (Score:2)
Haha!! LOLZ!! That is teh funny! (Score:2)
You seem to have no problem with the violation of the eighth amendment, maybe we should violate his seventh and just skip the whole trial too, shall we?
The Seventh Amendment... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
Spammers will not go away as long as people are willing to pay for their "services".
Missing the point, maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that should be the message here. No matter how annoying spam is, it's seldom seen as the type of crime that anybody should really worry about. A lot of people probably don't even see it as a "crime" -- and by people, read legislators. The message from this story is that the kind of people who put together large-scale, organized spam operations are not only a financial burden on society but they are also, sometimes, serious scumbags. Think Al Capone and tax evasion; spam operations should be seen as a red flag for a gray-market mentality, at minimum. Dig a little further and you could find other, more serious criminal operations.
More Serious... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Criminal Fruad. (Think "unsubscribe")
2) FCC rule-breaking
3) Microsoft Exploits
4) Bank scams
5) Obscenity
This in addition to what you mentioned, that a spam business indicates more crimes means it should be taken very seriously. Why has the DoJ been so bent on making examples of hackers, but completely ignored the true scum that are scammers?
Re:His spamming and this incident seem unrelated (Score:2)
It's a quote from Stargate SG-1. It's a little out of context, so it probably does not make sense to someone who's not seen the show.
By evil, they were talking more about the temptation to do an act that could be construed as evil. The evil in this case is an internal conflict, not something outside.
Re:I Propose a Swap: Abdul Rahman and the Spammer (Score:4, Funny)
Bomb them into the stone-age, I'm fine with that. But for fuck's sake... sending them a spammer? That's just pure sadism.
Ummm, does this mean? (Score:2)
Re:Ummm, does this mean? (Score:2)
Yeah, he does not have Republican connections like former Enron executives. He forgot to make some "donations", tax deductible, of course.
Obligatory Queen statement (Score:3, Funny)
Good! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good! (Score:2)
Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)
>
> Rape is HILARIOUS.
If he doesn't enjoy the assreaming he's getting from inmate #49147, he can simply opt out of future pelvic thrusts by saying "I opt out of future pelvic thrusts" to inmate #49147.
Of course, inmate #49148 has as much right as #49147 to offer his exciting products and and services as #49147 does. It's only one stroke, right? Just opt out, Rizler! Just opt out!
takeaway to pass on to Marketing ... (Score:5, Funny)
I always knew.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I always knew.. (Score:3, Funny)
The only bigger thing that stuff leads to is bigger money for them.
Sounds like a bad joke to me... (Score:2, Funny)
A: A start.
Oblig. Bash.org Quote (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like we are one step closer to this "perfect world" Fooz speaks of!
Crime 101 (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, when you're going to call someone from jail to discuss killing a witness have them steal your attorney's cell phone first...
Re:Crime 101 (Score:2)
Not to mention the humurous one-liners he could spout about getting a victim's blood on his Armani suit, or how t
It just demonstrates something we already knew. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, he's in jail, using the jail's phone to set up witness intimidation and, possibly, murder. Anybody who thinks jail phones aren't monitored is a fool. It just goes to show: spammers are stupid.
Re:It just demonstrates something we already knew. (Score:2)
To paraphrase Obi Wan: "Who is the bigger fool: the spammer, or the fools who bought $20M of his shady products?"
Rizler? (Score:2)
(or in other words "In Soviet Spamerica, Rizler threatens to smoke YOU!")
Solution to b1g problems? (Score:2)
C1@lis can help! Order now!!
Holy yikes....he's just a kid!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.spamdailynews.com/uploads/rizler_003.j
I mean good lord. He amassed that kind of wealth that quickly, is now in jail and was threatening to kill another human being.
So sad...I don't feel bad for him, per se...but it makes me sick...
Re:Holy yikes....he's just a kid!!!! (Score:2)
Re:Holy yikes....he's just a kid!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
And yes, this happends to our kids rather quickly nowadays.
Re:Holy yikes....he's just a kid!!!! (Score:2)
At which time does threatening to kill people for selfish reasons BECOME evil, chum?
Re:Holy yikes....he's just a kid!!!! (Score:2)
Note that nowhere in that definition is there the word "senseless" or "pointless", which would be the case if killing for a reason were not evil.
Just because you have a reason for doing something, that doesn't by itself make that thing any less evil.
Re:Holy yikes....he's just a kid!!!! (Score:2)
I want to kill someone just because I'm evil. So I have a reason. Which means I'm not evil by definition.
My head asplode.
Re:Holy yikes....he's just a kid!!!! (Score:2)
The sad thing is, I'm not even sure I'm joking. I don't even have an MBA.
Re:Holy yikes....he's just a kid!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
He's literally willing to do "whatever it takes" to keep himself in the life. Too bad for him he's also an idiot. The world is a better place with him behind bars. Let's hope he stays there for a very long time.
Regards,
Ross
Maybe... (Score:4, Funny)
I say we send him (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing I was thinking though, will we get more spam as spammers get more and more time for their crime. Instead of just your grandmas spamming from their computer part time we gonna get sophisticated criminal/spam organizations who will get into this as the chance jail time vs profit increases. Just like drug trafficing. The more time you get for it the more money you can make from it.
LOL... (Score:5, Funny)
Murcielago - $230,000.00
Houses in Prior Lake and Burnsville - 1 Million dollars
Being a high school dropout spammer stupid enough to use a jail phone to arrange a hit - Priceless!
dumb and dummer (Score:2)
Post Patriot Act, every phone is a jail phone.
The Greeks were right (Score:2)
Oh, the hubris! The hubris!
(snicker)
A new way to deal with spammers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A new way to deal with spammers? (Score:5, Insightful)
A professional spammer is a selfish, greedy person who not only lacks compassion for other human beings but who actively seeks new ways to trick victims and steal their money and resources, all for personal gain. This is a tad worse than the typical marketer.
Anyway, this is EXACTLY the kind of person who can be involved in other criminal activities, possibly even violent crime, because they lack empathy and concern for others in society.
Spammers should be shot (Score:2)
Karma (not the /. kind) (Score:2)
Christopher William Smith, also known as Chris Johnson, Bruce Jonson, Robert Jonson, Dieter W. Doneit-Schmitz, and Eric Smith, had amassed so much wealth from his pharmacy business that he could afford houses in Prior Lake and Burnsville and keep a fleet of luxury automobiles (2006 Mercedes Benz S65, 2004 Lamborghini Murciélago, 2005 Mercedes Benz C55A, 2001 Ferrari, 2001 BMW M5 Sedan, 2004 Mercedes Maybach, 2005 Jeep Wrangler, 2004 Cadillac DeVille Limousine, 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe, 2001 Hummer
Re:Karma (not the /. kind) (Score:2)
Re:Anybody surprised? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anybody surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
Personality Defect (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Personality Defect (Score:2)
Re:Personality Defect (Score:5, Interesting)
I was talking with a friend this morning about whiners, children who throw screaming tantrums in store to get the candy they want. Most children try it, and if they manage to get away with it, the whining can become a permananent part of their psyche. I've actually seen college kids engage in pouting tantrums.
Chronic riminal behavior is probably similar. As a kid this guy probably stole money from his mom's purse and got away with it. He got caught stealing a pack of gum from the store, but his mom let him get away with it. He probably discovered that his mother would believe him no matter how outrageous his lies. You know his mother, she's the one that always says "my little boy would never do something like that." Thus, he learns that theft and lying are an acceptable means of getting what you want.
Re:Personality Defect (Score:2)
Ric Romero? Is that you?
I've been hanging around Fark for too long.
Re:Personality Defect (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily acceptable - most criminals know what they are doing is unacceptable - but effective. If you perform small crimes a number of times with no consequences, you tend to think that it's an effective way of making money. You still know it's "wrong" but you don't believe you'll ever have to face the consequences.
I've heard the same is true about gambling - most chronic gamblers are those who have a big win early on. If you give it a go a few times and consistently lose money, your likely not to get hooked. But if you win during your first few tries, your much more likely to become addicted.
Re:Personality Defect (Score:2)
Re:Personality Defect (Score:2)
New TV Show (Score:2)
I can see it now, "SMTP, Systems Investigator". Watch him in the next exciting episode where he spends 5 hours pouring over log files and hits on the one woman in his department.
Re:For those complaining about spam... (Score:2)
Sounds like a great product. Previously, you used to have to install some malicious code on a bunch of PCs to conduct a DDOS attack. Now you'll only have to send a bunch of fake spams with the site as a click through. cool!
Re:For those complaining about spam... (Score:2)
Re:This is news? (Score:2)
Hmm, you have recently been stationed in Iraq?
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
The backpedaling and endless justifications for American torture practice and methods are just
What the US is doing is not just "humiliation"
Do not confuse the US "humilation of prisoners" with civil treatment by a moral society. Even the rules of war (to which the US professes to be a subscriber) prohibit the things that America now routinely does to prisoners taken in the Middle East. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy!
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to see prisoner abuse, take a look at the Iraqi governments prisoners. They routinely have prisoners who "commit suicide" or were killed "trying to escape". The Iraqi police are particularly bad - I have some pictures of a group of prisoners that were tortured by the IPs. Not interrogated, just tortured. No question asking, just rubber hoses and AK-47s. Compared to a back laid open beatings and AK rounds through the meat of the legs, a few gut punches and a black eye looks pretty damn good. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the world isn't a black-and-white moral landscape. It's all shades of gray, and sometimes being the lesser of two evils is what makes you the good guy. This "not as bad as Hussein" angle is not just that; it's the plain truth. I envy the apparent strength of your moral convictions, but I pity you for the way you've allowed them to blind you.
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Universal Soldier
by Donovan
He's five foot-two, and he's six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He's all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen,
Been a soldier for a thousand years.
He'a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn't kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.
And he's fighting for Canada,
He's fighting for France,
He's fighting for the USA,
And he's fighting for the Russians,
And he's fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way.
And he's fighting for Democracy,
He's fighting for the Reds,
He says it's for the peace of all.
He's the one who must decide,
Who's to live and who's to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He's the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can't go on.
He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can't you see,
This is not the way we put the end to war.
--
Cheers
Stor
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Informative)
Some prisoners definitely were tortured to death by U.S. forces in Iraq. From one of Seymour Hersh's pieces: "Two Iraqi faces that do appear in the photographs are those of dead men. There is the battered face of prisoner No. 153399, and the bloodied body of another prisoner, wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. There is a photograph of an empty room, splattered with blood." So yes, some of it was "honest-to-god death-inducing torture." Prisoners were also tortured to death in Afghanistan. Get your facts straight.
I know this is a bit off the topic of the discussion, but it just pisses me off when people try to whitewash the behavior of the Bush Administration, and offer pathetic excuses like "we didn't torture people as much as Saddam Hussein". Here's a hint: if the only way to put your country's behavior in a positive light is by drawing a comparison to a psychotic, sadistic, murderous dictator, your country is doing something really, really fucked up and wrong.
Damn straight it's Bush's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
The correct answer is an emphatic, "YES!" When the courts martial refused to examine the possibility that Lynndie England was merely following orders [wikipedia.org], when the Bush administration's highest-ranking lawyer drafts legal briefs on instructions directly from from the President as to why their abuse of prisoners is perfectly legal despite warnings from the Navy's general counsel that the [lawofwar.org]"legal theories granting the president the right to authorize abuse in spite of the Geneva Conventions were unlawful, dangerous and erroneous" [csmonitor.com] -- how the hell could you NOT conclude that
- the Bush administration knew perfectly well what it was doing
- knew that it was illegal
- wanted a legal smokescreen for the time when such activities leaked out
The abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were all carried out under color of authority -- the administration's authority -- which has violated all manner of treaties to which the United States is signatory, not to mention its own Constitution and laws.The question isn't whether Bush and his greasy pals -- Cheney foremost among them -- should be impeached. The question is, how far down does the moral rot go?
Re:This is news? (Score:2)
Note that you didn't qualify this in any way. You didn't say for example "by the US Army". So, I can say you are wrong merely by pointing out the people who have been beheaded.