Another Millionaire Spammer Story 979
An anonymous reader writes "Here's another story about a millionaire spammer who thinks he is doing nothing wrong and can't wait to get his hands on the next generation of spamming software." See also the last installment.
Why does he have to wait? (Score:0, Informative)
Slashcode is freely distributable under the terms of the GPL.
Sincerely,
A. Lincoln
Here's his email address and more info (Score:5, Informative)
scum bag info [spamhaus.org]
I'm still looking for the physical adress of his *new* home/data center. If anyone finds it as well as his phone number, or his email *he* uses. Post it!
You get the feeling... (Score:5, Informative)
Today, Ralsky says he is trying to keep a lower profile, operating through cell phones and unlisted numbers. Ralsky agreed to this interview and the tour of his operation only if I promised not to print the address of his new home, which I found in Oakland County real estate records.
Or, in other words, "I promised not to reveal the address, but if you want to look it up, here's how to do so..."
Re:what's the exact address? (Score:3, Informative)
Subtle no? ;)
What a moron... (Score:2, Informative)
Ralsky, Alan M
5016 Patrick Rd,
West Bloomfield, MI48322-1543
(248)661-3355
Re:Good to know he has money... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'd like to see if this is *really* possible! (Score:5, Informative)
I can envision what would do this - there's been stories about this already. It's those popup messages that come up from Windows Messenger. Easy enough to turn off and block, but most people don't.
Re:I'd like to see if this is *really* possible! (Score:3, Informative)
The MS windows messaging service. With knowledge of an IP, you can send a message a computer that's just sitting on the network, with no software aside from the system + middleware running.
You can turn off the service, use any one of a dozen windows software firewalls, or just uninstall the bugger if you don't use it.
Re:I'd like to see if this is *really* possible! (Score:5, Informative)
Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be called stealth spam. It is intricate computer software, said Ralsky, that can detect computers that are online and then be programmed to flash them a pop-up ad, much like the kind that display whenever a particular Web site is opened. "This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything.
I seriously doubt that this guy has some new revolutionary technology that will allow him to force ads to pop up no matter what we are doing. This sounds like the typical spyware that comes with kazaa and other similar programs. There is a great cure for this: Ad-Aware [lavasoftusa.com]. This could also be the IE bug that was mentioned on slashdot yesterday [slashdot.org].
Whatever this guy is talking about, it can be easily defeated by ad-aware, using mozilla, or disabling activex in IE.
Been there, done that (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'd like to see if this is *really* possible! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What a moron... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'd like to see if this is *really* possible! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Here's his email address and more info (Score:3, Informative)
You can access it with a credit card.
Ralsky's contact info (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Spammers NEW address now available (Score:5, Informative)
Oakland County Register Of Deeds
1200 N. Telegraph Rd., Dept 480
Pontiac, Michigan 48341-0480
(248) 858-0597
Looks like just a few bucks...
Oakland County Register of Deeds [oakland.mi.us]
Oakland County Register of Deeds (fees) [oakland.mi.us]
Re:Here's his email address and more info (Score:5, Informative)
The author of the story tells you exactly how he found the address of his House of Spam. Pretty clever subversion of the spammer's request not to release that information to the public, if you ask me.
Re:I'd like to see if this is *really* possible! (Score:2, Informative)
There are about a trillion hits on Google, so I'll let you do the rest
For crying out loud! (Score:5, Informative)
Course, it's the same dumb schmucks who get all the spam mail, which suits me just fine.
The *real* problem is all these bloody spam stories on Slashdot. You only get spam these days because you want spam or are too dumb to do anything about it...
http://pyzor.sourceforge.net/
http://razor.sou
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/d
http://www.spamassassin.org/
http://www.zant
etc etc etc etc.
Re:I'd like to see if this is *really* possible! (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a picture of Ralsky (Score:5, Informative)
you can get him HERE!!!!!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good to know he has money... (Score:4, Informative)
You can send one with:
echo -n "Hi, I'm an annoying winpopup" | smbclient -M host
Re:I'd like to see if this is *really* possible! (Score:3, Informative)
You mean except firewalling TCP port 139 and UDP 137?
Re:Here's his email address and more info (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps the $730,000 transaction in Bloomfield Hills (where his lawyer is from)?
4288 Stoneleigh Rd., $730,000
There are no $740,000 transactions listed..
Just like always... (Score:2, Informative)
1. This guy is not rich! He's living paycheck to paycheck, he has several huge loans and he has a lot of credit card debt.
2. It doesn't matter that he doesn't own anything he has. He knows how to take advantage of the system. If his spam business starts to go sour, he just declares bankruptcy again and gets to keep all his stuff. Then he sells some of it and moves on to his next scam.
3. He's always made his money by stealing from other people. Look for words in the article like "bankruptcy", "insurance", "defrauded", and "marketing".
Why we allow people like this to live, I'll never know...
Re:I'd like to see if this is *really* possible! (Score:2, Informative)
Here's why I still use PINE (Score:1, Informative)
So does anybody else think that using a simple text e-mail reader is now a good thing? If you are reading html, you are giving away information, and I'd rather not do that with spammers.
Re:Ok, Step # 1 (Score:2, Informative)
- firewall ports 135-139 (or better, firewall the entire reserved port range and open those you need)
- if the system is win9x, you need to turn off file/print sharing, or at least unbind it from your interface going to the internet
- if the system is NT-based, you need to stop and disable the "Windows Messenger" service. Note that this is not "Messenger the instant messaging client."
Ralsky has Chinese associates (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Spammers NEW address now available (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Spammers NEW address now available (Score:3, Informative)
Map to house and several alliases (Score:1, Informative)
Aliases and Addresses
Name: Alan M Ralsky 5016 Patrick Rd. West Bloomfield, MI 48322 248-661-3355
Aliases and Addresses
Jeff Kramer 6567 Long Lake Road Birmingham, MI 48009
Domain Name: cambridgewater.net [cambridgewater.net]
Jeff Kramer (COCO-227918) aral54
Additional Benefits
2121 Richard Ave W. Bloomfield, MI 48322 248-200-3492
Creative Marketing Zone Inc 5016 Patrick Rd West Bloomfield, MI 48322
Sam Smith (MAILSVC2-DOM) 200 W. Long Lake Drive Troy, MI 48332 US
Domain Name: MAILSVC.NET [mailsvc.net]
Smith, Sam (SS9752) aral
William Window (template COCO-265759)
4512 Westside Royal Oak, Michigan 48098 US
William Window (COCO-265759) aral54
+1 248 544 4314
Alan Ralsky, (AR1574) aral
Sav-Rx (RXPOINT-DOM) Domain Name: RXPOINT.COM [rxpoint.com]
9439 N Leamington Skokie, IL 60077
(847) 677-5516 (FAX) (847) 677-5329
Alan M Ralsky, (AMR43) amr1
Additonal Benefits 5016 Patrick Drive
West Bloomfield, MI 48322 1-248-661-3355 (FAX) 1-248-661-3054
AB Internet 528 S. State St. PMB 523
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
(There is no building face with that address on it. There *is*, however, a building that accepts that mail - the University of Michigan Student Union, and the Mailboxes, Etc. that is housed therein.)
rxpoint.com [rxpoint.com]
5016 Patrick Rd. West Bloomfield, MI 48322
MPI Global 5016 Patrick Road W Bloomfield, MI 48322
(248) 661-3355
mpiglobal 25514 Graceland Dearborn Heights, MI 48125US
Ray Esseily mpiglobal.com [mpiglobal.com]
25514 Graceland Drive Dearborn Heights , MI 48125
1-313-278-8845
Re:Here's his email address and more info (Score:3, Informative)
Checked through Lexis public records search. It's under his name, recently updated.
Heck,how do you know whether nobody died just yet? (Score:2, Informative)
Condoning spam actually encourages spammers, not just to continue their business at everyone else's expense, but sometimes even to sue people who refuse [ii.net] to pay for receiving the pitches for their scams.
This means that as long as spam is considered a legitimate business, fighting it can be dangerous, even though it is spying out your personal data and usage patterns as well as inundating your entire families' inboxes (including those of children!) with UCE for all sorts of fraud and porn.
Fortunately the voices of reason are finally being heard, therefore much of this is changing [slashdot.org]:
Spam has just become illegal (article 13) [eu.int] in the entire European Economic Area.
Soon spam will swamp everything else. (...)
OK, spam is not a good thing, but aren't we getting a little carried away here?
The one point you're forgetting could actually be seen as implied in your own statement: Spammers spam everything, everyone, every address, everywhere, all the time. If it's legal, their numbers will continue to rise.
Digital convergence brings eMail addresses to phones, and pagers have also had them for a long time (now tell me how you click "opt out" on any of these!). If the phone or pager of a doctor becomes unusable due to this "perfectly legal activity", it won't be long before people are dying. If the same happens to the device of a firefighter, a hospital's or an airport's system administrator, people are dying all the same, in the name of spam.
If you think this threat is greatly exaggerated, Japan is a few years ahead in mobile technology (page 3) [japaninc.net], and with spam making up more than 80% of all messaging, their experience with what will globally become everyone's future of electronic communications is just devastating [jir.net].
Make sure there will be a federal law against spam [spamlaws.com] - and you'd better speak up before it's too late...
Your congress(wo)man is waiting for your mail.
Just now. And tomorrow. And all week/month/year through, until they finally stop the spam.
Re:All spammers (Score:2, Informative)
So yes they're doing stuff like that, but it isn't neccesarily with images.
Note to Mozilla developers -- we may need a flag to turn off not just images in email, but also style sheets, or any other URL reference from email messages.
Re:These numbers can't possibly be true... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Spammers NEWEST address now available (Score:4, Informative)
Buyer: ALAN M RALSKY
Buyer Mailing Address:
6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Seller: BING CONSTRUCTION CO
Property Address: 6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Sale Date: 8/28/2002
Recorded Date: 9/12/2002
Sale Price: $ 740,000 (Full Amount)
By the way, the patrick road address listed in the other sellers post was sold in 2001 first to Irmengard Ralsky and then to Dan Shammami for $265K