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Spammer Robert Soloway Arrested
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu May 31, 2007 07:00 AM
from the that-should-fix-it dept.
from the that-should-fix-it dept.
Mike writes "Yahoo is reporting that US prosecutors captured Robert Soloway, a prolific Internet marketer responsible so much junk e-mail they called him "Spam King." Soloway was arrested in Seattle, Washington, a week after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud. Soloway is accused of using botnets to disguise where e-mail originated and of forging return addresses of real people or businesses for his mass mailings. If convicted as charged, Soloway will face a maximum sentence of more than 65 years in prison and a fine of 250,000 dollars."
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[+]
The New Yorker On Spam 132 comments
aqk notes an article in the Aug. 6th New Yorker surveying the spam problem up-to-date. The New Yorker may not be exactly the MSM, but it is pretty influential. The author got only one fact wrong that I noticed: Canter and Siegel's seminal spam was propagated through Usenet and not email. Still, it's a good look at the history of spam and the scale of the problem today. The amount of spam that "spam king" Robert Alan Soloway, indicted under the CAN-SPAM Act, is accused of sending over a period of four years is now pumped out about every 30 seconds, around the clock, around the world.
[+]
Your Rights Online: Spam King Pleads Guilty in Seattle 152 comments
arbitraryaardvark writes "The Seattle Times reports that spammer Robert Soloway has pled guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion, in exchange for the state dropping multiple counts of identify theft. 'The electronic-mail fraud charge is punishable by up to five years in prison. The tax charge is a misdemeanor and carries a maximum one-year sentence. The law also allows for fines against Soloway and his business of up to $625,000 on all charges. Both sides agreed to let U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman determine not just the amount of prison time Soloway, 28, might serve but also the number of his victims, the size of any fine and the amount of restitution he may be ordered to pay.' We've previously discussed his arrest and mention in the New Yorker. The wire fraud felony count is based on selling $500 packages to wannabe spammers."
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give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Insightful)
However I believe that spamming should not be a crime. In the grand scheme of things... robbing someone is much worse.
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Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad analogy time (hey, this is Slashdot, after all...) - he's not breaking into your house and stealing all the electrical goods to sell at the local pawn shop. Instead, he's breaking into every single house in the whole neighbourhood while the owners are away at work, and using all the bedrooms to run his own private brothel, and then leaving the owners to clean up the mess.
Maybe his actions sit somewhere between robbery and fraud, but either way they are still most definitely criminal IMHO. Simply spamming (in the literal meaning of the word - "sending unsolicited email") should be a misdemeanor depending entirely on the volume of spam sent, and whether any of the email headers are fraudulent. Bot-farming, however, should be a felony.
Parent
Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had mod points today I would give them to you...
spam will never go away, it's a multi billion dollar industry and people actually buy this stuff. So there's a very strong business case to keep it around. Capitalism...
The process of sending unsolicited email may or may not be something you can criminalize if the sender is accurately representing themselves in the email. However, the process of not removing someone from a mailing list upon their request can be considered harassment. I don't know if harassment is a misdemeanor or a felony. Probably depends on the degree. I'll assume for now it is not a felony.
But doing this under snake oil pretenses is a criminal intent. You hide your true identify by forge mail headers and trespassing onto other peoples computers.
The forgery should be treated as just exactly that -- forgery. I think this is considered a felony.
The invasion of someone elses computer should be treated as breaking and entering or theft. The economic value of the theft should be calculated on the cost of the machine being stolen. This would push most actions out of small claims/misdemeanors into felony court. So this too is a felony.
So there you have it, based on previously existing law. Spam is legal if accurately represented. Continuing to send Spam is a misdemeanor. Sending spam as a misrepresentation of yourself or through resources you do not have permission to use, is a felony. Is that so hard to work with?
Parent
Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
shit like this is why we have a huge prison population. there ARE other means of punishing this guy than locking him up for life (which I doubt will happen anyway). sentence him to work on antispam measures, sentence him to be a teacher in an inner city school, make him work it off.
Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, you get arrested for DUI(crime in which you put other lives at risk and you get a 23 days sentence) but for a non-violent, non-life threatning crime such and identity theft and spamming(the action of sending lots of emails(GOTO 10, you know, can't live without it)) you get 65 years + a fine.
Some law makers aren't thinking. On that note, I wish to recommend a more appropriate sentence : 65 years of first line tech support
-Hi, you have reached comcast tech support, my name is Paris, how can I help you?
-Hi m'am, the internet no work no more.
-OMG, what are we gonna do, like OMG, I'm so hot but people aren't gonna know no more z'OMG
Parent
Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:4, Interesting)
1) He was sending 20 million emails over 15 days. Let's call that 1 million emails per day.
2) He was doing this since 2003. Let's call that 3 years.
3) 3 Years * 365 Days * 1 million emails per day is 1,095,000,000 emails.
4) Some spam emails are obvious and some are not. Lets say it takes you, on average, 5 seconds additional time to detect and delete a spam email. That's 5,475,000,000 seconds he has cost people.
5) 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours, 365.25 days = 173 years.
6) That doesn't include cpu cycles waisted or law enforcement costs. That's 2+ lifetimes. *just in wasted time*.
Even if I am off by an order of magnitude. I'm ok with years of prison. (I'm also ok with higher penalties for drunk driving, but that's another story.)
Parent
Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the best argument. I'm a technology-oriented person and am in very good shape. In fact, I'm a state boxing champ. So not all nerds are pasty, 98-pound weaklings.
Second, there is probably tremendous profit potential in dealing in spam. If there weren't, people like this wouldn't do it. What's six months or a few uncomfortable years in prison if you come out rich, and with rights to the TV movie and book?
Finally, you get someone who's already a criminal, and a pretty smart one at that, and throw him in the general population with other criminals. What do you think they're going to talk about there while he festers? Probably one of two things: Jesus or crime, and more probably talk about crime. Prison is like crime college featuring taxpayer-paid tuition, room and board.
Prison should be reserved for those who are out to physically harm others and cannot be loose. We should use community service and other society-beneficial practices to punish and rehabilitate those that commit nonviolent crimes.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Care to explain the difference?
When someone robs the purse of one person, he's a criminal. He made the life of one single person miserable, once.
When someone constantly makes the life of millions of people miserable, he should be at the very least as much a criminal.
Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Insightful)
And more importantly, we should ask ourselves: What is the purpose of spam? It's to separate people from their money (either by selling something, by identity theft, or by fraud). Identity theft is actually worse than a one-time robbery. Fraud would be the same as robbing someone. The only case that couldn't be consider the same as or worse than robbery is the marketing of a legitimate item. Unfortunately, if you look at the techniques used by spammers to bypass spam filters and those market their wares on people who are clearly not interested, you have to assume that the product they are marketing is not worth a dime. In my book, tricking someone into buying something that isn't worth the money is the same as robbery. And for the spammer, it's not just one robbery. It's robbing everybody who "bites" the hook.
Consider the fact that the spammer *knows* that it's a crime (otherwise there would be little attempt to hide the origin of email). The spammer *knows* that almost nobody on his list wants to receive the email (otherwise there would be no need to use a botnet to bypass spam filters). The spammer *knows* (or ought to know) that it's illegal to compromise somebody's computer and use it against their will. So you have here a person who knows that it's illegal and socially unacceptable to do what they are doing, and that there will be severe punishment if they get caught. Yet despite the fact that they could count their winnings and move on, they continue to follow the path of a criminal.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have a graphic heavy website (Gallery 1.x based). Most of my traffic is bots crawling the site and leaving comment spam. Just an annoyance? My bandwidth
Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy Crap you're a bleeding heart pussy!!!
Rehabilitation works only if there's remorse for a crime. The only thing he is aware of is the $$$ he makes. If he had to delete 20 billion spam then he might start getting a clue of just how much of a pain in the ass he is for doing his business the way he has. I would go further in that he should also be held accountable for the format/install of all those owned machines out there. And on top of that he's probably also responsible for a lot of people buying new computers under the false impression that they need to get a new one because the old one is slow. It's only slow because of his doings.
I have no interest in rehabilitation unless someone actually shows a sense of regret and remorse for their crimes. And even then there's a question of being real or just playing the therapists.
I do hope that if he's convicted that they have the sense to toss everything they have at him.
Parent
Re:give hima real punishment... (Score:5, Insightful)
[1] I predict we'll see a drop off in pen1s 3nlargement!!1! emails after he spends some time in the prison showers...
Parent
Is 65 years excessive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is 65 years excessive? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes millions have people have been inconvenienced, and yes phenomenal amounts of bandwidth have been wasted (the costs of this have been mostly incurred by victims of the spammer).This is a white collar crime.
The spammer is not a danger to society, just a pain in the arse so an appropriate punishment is a small prison sentence, coupled with a phenomenal fine - e.g. 10 million dollars.
Parent
Re:Is 65 years excessive? (Score:5, Funny)
Whoever this Mr. Noone is, he really sounds like the victim here.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you're a rich, successful criminal, you should get off very lightly? $10 million may be a lot to thee and me, but is it to him?
And if he doesn't have $10 million, well, you can't get blood from a stone.
Re:Is 65 years excessive? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Is 65 years excessive? (Score:5, Informative)
I think that sentence for all charges not just spamming: identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud. So if you add them all up, 65 years is probably right.
Parent
Re:Is 65 years excessive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, not in the least. When you consider that he took over people's machines, used those machines to scam people, took their money and laundered it for his own use and forged other people's email addresses for the return addresses on his emails, thus having innocent people harassed, 65 years is a good start.
Solitary confinement with him only able to be out three hours a day would be a good thing. In fact, use his money the government wants to confiscate to pay for his incarceration. That way the taxpayers don't have to foot to the bill for this asshat.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is 65 years excessive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a difference between stealing $50,000 from a bank, and stealing 1 cent from each of 5 million of the bank's customers? It's the same amount of money, and the same people are going to absorb the cost. But for some reason people think "1 cent per person isn't that much" and decide to let the spammer off easy. Just because the crime is distributed across many victims doesn't make it any less of a crime.
Parent
Re:Is 65 years excessive? (Score:4, Insightful)
Multiply that by 1 million people and you get an idea of the real damages due to this guy.
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The reason most criminals are never rehabilitated (at least in the U.S.) is because most prisons (especially adult ones) don't even try--because they have lazy "they can't BE rehabilitated" attitudes very much like yours. This is a real
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it's a start. (Score:3, Interesting)
Minimum.
Thank Goodness (Score:5, Funny)
[x] Eliminate SPAM From Internet
[ ] Bring peace to Middle East
[ ] Make $1,000,000,000
That's one less thing for me to do now...
Re:Thank Goodness (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
More on Soloway.. (Score:5, Informative)
There's plenty of evidence around to nail Soloway for a long, long time.. but to be honest he's not even the worst spammer out there. I suspect the possibility of a plea bargain is quite likely, so that international law enforcement can get to the even bigger fish.
Why not a RICO prosecution? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm always surprised that they go after these so-called "spam kings" as if they were committing their crimes in a vacuum without the help of other people or other institutions.
As much as spam seems linked to a much larger world of theft, fraud, money laundering, stock manipulation, and more well-known organized crime I would think that a RICO investigation would be a big help.
I would also think it would go a long way towards ending the t
Sweet. I propose another arrest. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm kidding about the arrest part but it sure would be nice if Microsoft was called into the spotlight and at least publicly embarrassed for it's key role in spam production. Enough so that even my mom and dad (who think Windows is great) understand the malfeasance done by Windows' pathetic security record.
Now I'll buy penis enlargement pills... (Score:4, Funny)
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, sure...he did more then just spam. But even murderers often come off with less then 65 years, so is spam, impersonating people, using botnets, etc. *really* worse than murdering people?
People should get a grip.
I'm all for laws against spam and all the rest of it, but hell, 5 years + a considerable fine is more than enough.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem isn't that the punishment for non-murder crimes is too high, it's that all too often murderers get off without a life imprisonment or capital punishment. Especially if they manage to wheel and deal their way down to manslaughter or something similar.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Reason?" What if I told you that his actions single-handedly required an extra 65 man-years to fix? Certainly not far-fetched: that's about 3 minutes for 10 million people, erasing spam, updating filters, installing firewalls, reinstalling the operating system, and that's before we get into the felonies he's charged with, such as wire fraud. And what about the hours worked by his victims to pay for the new sec
Soloway Mocks MS Suit - Will he mock again? (Score:5, Informative)
Get real, people (Score:5, Insightful)
Now is the time for him to get the short/pointy end of the stick...the stick that he sharpened and used on all of us. He took time away from each of us that we will never get back. Talking about fair this or fair that in terms of years behind bars....are you serious? Wake up. This guy leached your life and given the opportunity, he would not hesitate to do it again.
It is only fair to take his time away from him until he has no more.
Anyone else think we have our priorities mixed? (Score:4, Interesting)
However, if you infringe on someone's copyright in the U.S. then your maximum fine is $250,000 per infringement not to mention a possible 5 year jail sentence as well.
Clearly spam's a problem, but not as big of a problem as Napster and Limewire - after all, the Spam King was making money and Napster was just giving away music!
Lesson: If you're going to be a nuisance to people and corporations, make sure you make lots of money doing it so your punishment isn't as severe for proving you're a good capitalistic American.
Proportion (Score:3, Informative)
Think about time.
Think about the time you spend/spent 1) deleting spam, 2) writing rules to filter spam, 3) learning, writing, installing, configuring bayesian apps.
Add to that the time spent by your POP/IMAP/SMTP/Exchange server to receive spam and forward it to you the one that passed thru the aforementioned filters.
Think about the total time you spent dealing with spam, in one form or another.
Then multiply that time for all the people on Earth that face the same problem as you do - from simple users to ISP admins - and have to think and implement solutions - from "ignore and delete" to complex auto-training systems.
65 years suddenly appear a shard of a split second, compared to the total wasted time.
A Punishment to Fit the Crime? (Score:3, Interesting)
Every time a spam message gets through my filters, I suffer a brief twinge of irritation. I've been receiving spam in varying amounts since the mid-90s, and I wonder what the cumulative effect of all those little irritants would be.
I also wonder what the cumulative effect of the millions of people he spammed having those little irritations over the years would be. Spread over millions of people and several years it may not seem so bad, but the cumulative effect is that a wave of minor negativity washes over the planet when people like this guy send out spam. Sure it's not the great symbol odegra in a road system, but it's another thing that brings the general happiness of the planet down a jot.
Maybe the punishment should factor in the number of people he spammed, as a multiplier. Not one to one, but some multiplier.
It's probably a terrible idea, but then I'd extend anti-spam legislation to all advertising forms if I could. Billboards jostling for that last square centimetre of space seem just as bad as emails written by the mental giants who think that mis-spelling erectile drugs will make me more likely to buy them.
Re:A crime? (Score:4, Informative)
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