Russia's Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered

Karellen !-P writes "Vardan Kushnir, a notorious russian spammer who headed the English learning centers, the Center for American English, the New York English Centre and the Centre for Spoken English, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head."

Three Cheers!

[Oz0ne]

Someone removed a person who makes their living by harassing (and possibly defrauding) people?

I'd say that's justice!

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[AKAImBatman]

Pretty much nobody does business there of any sort, let alone shady stuff like hacking and spamming, without having connections to the mob.

That's not quite true. The Russian culture is certainly full of corruption given that the KGB effectively became the Mafia, but Moscow has become a booming city ripe with economic opportunity. New freeways, inexpensive cars, waterparks, big businesses (Sun's Russian HQ is right across the street from my father-in-law!), and Aerospace technologies are just a few areas where Moscow has been booming. Another big area is restaurant chains. There are now more international food chains in Russia than ever before!

Russia is something of a third world country that's pulling itself back up into an economic power. Along the way there will be TONS of greed and corruption, but don't confuse that with the honest growth that is occurring. :-)

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Daniel_Staal]

Um, Russia should be the *definition* of a second world country... First world was (roughly) the NATO group, Second world was (roughly) Warsaw Pact, Third world was everybody else.

Just being unbearably pendantic.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[ilyaaohell]

Wrong. The cyrillic letter for 'H' is 'X'. In any case, how is this a measure of wealth for a country to have foreign chain stores? I LIVED in the Soviet Union. I remember when the first McDonald's was built. A hamburger cost a month's salary, and the only reason there was a long line several hundred people in length is because the Russian people were so supressed that they desperately earned to try something they only read about or seen on TV. Coincidentally, I bet you'd find it "progress" if I told you that the cost of the hamburger since then has gone down from a month's sallary to a week's sallary. Sure, there are a handful of millionaires here and there, the vast majority of whom earned their wealth by "stealing" the property and industries that the government abandoned after instituting a more free market. But for the VAST majority of Russians, which I'm assuming is something like 98% of the population, none of these "cheap" chain stores are any more affordable to them than a night at the Opera is to you.

Your sig is a dreamhost ad.

[Futurepower(R)]

See the sig above: $16, $0 Domain, 7.6GB Disk, 192GB pipe, MySQL, RoR, IMAP, [alderflats.com] ("alderflats.com" links to Dreamhost.com.)

(I know this is off-topic, but it is on-topic in that sigs are allowed, and sometimes we need to comment on sigs.)

Now I understand the Dreamhost ads [dreamhost.com] we see in people's sigs, including that in the parent comment:

"Earn $97 CASH for each account you refer! Introducing DreamHost Rewards - the most flexible affiliate program of the web hosting world! You can choose to receive substantial one-time credits for each of your referrals, or recurring credits for every payment that your referrals EVER make to DreamHost! Credits can be paid out via PayPal or check, or applied to a hosting bill with DreamHost.com. You don't even need to host with us yourself! "

We've had problems with Dreamhost in the past. That was 3 years ago. Maybe they've changed. Anyone have any experience with the present Dreamhost?

How does Dreamhost compare with Powweb, for example [powweb.com]? They both seem to have abusive marketing ideas; that raises a red flag for me; if someone abuses other people, they will certainly abuse me, I think.

All those advertisements of huge bandwidth allotments are just sneaky marketing, for Powweb, anyway. Powweb limits the number of hits customers can get each day, so that no customer could possibly use all the bandwidth.

Sigs that are ads create conflict of interest. The commentor may make a useless comment just so the ad will be seen. That decreases the utility of discussions for everyone.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no character for the 'H' in Russian but other languages that use Cyrillic make use of the 'H' and its Cyrillic representation

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[bhtooefr]

Just for those of you who are seriously considering this, read this from that page:

The Specious Report ~

Spreading Rumors, Half-Truths & Misinformation Since 1789

Don't take it seriously. It's quite funny, but it's not our fault if you kill a spammer and get convicted of murder.

(Not that it shouldn't be done, of course ;-))

Re:This is why its a bad ideas to piss off psychos

[fucksl4shd0t]

Spamming should just be outlawed and we wont have to worry about this violence.

Right, because making something illegal immediately stops it from happening. What kind of crack are you smoking?

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Captain Scurvy]

Er, well, you're right that Russians tend to turn the Western "H" into their equivalent of a "G", but they don't do this with the Cyrillic transliteration of Pizza Hut, which is "Pitsa Khat". Although, in Russian, Harry Potter's first name is "Gari."

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to be pedantic, you should get it right.

Old World: Europe, Asia, and a little bit of North Africa;

New World: North and South America;

Third World: Everywhere else.

The meanings and connotations have been re-arranged a lot since those terms were first coined, but the true pedant should be holding out for the original terminology.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought (pedantically speaking) that it was Old World (Europe), New World (Americas), and Third World.

Re:Just a question...

[sheldon]

My girlfriend is Russian, and we've been dating over a year now. She's introduced me to a variety of Russian foods.

Here's the thing... Russia was/is a very poor country. When the US/Europe was(and the parts that still are) poor, you tend to eat what is available rather than what necessarily tasted the best. And you get used to it in time and kind of like it.

So some of the things my girlfriend will eat, I frankly won't touch. I'm not a big fan of dried fish, or pigs feet, gizzards, parts of a cow I'd never heard of, things like that. She is.

On the other hand... There's some really good food. Obviously the well known ones like Chicken Kiev, or Stroganoff(both of which when done well do not much resemble what is sold in the frozen food section at the grocery store by Stoufers).

Pirozhki is good. They also make wonderful crepes, like Blintze which can come with meat, cheese, caviar... etc. My girlfriend makes a dish with pork ribs and sour cabbage(sort of like sauerkraut but you don't let it ferment so it's not as pungent).

One of her favorite things is Pelmeni, which are like ravioli... pasta stuffed with meat. For a sauce you use vinegar and sour cream, though.

Russian Spammer murders in New Jersey

[billstewart]

A few years ago, a couple of Russian immigrants were found murdered in New Jersey. They were apparently spammers involved in a pump&dump stock scam. I don't think the crime was ever solved, but it was generally believed to be a Mafia deal (not sure if Russian Mafia or New York Traditional Mafia) by some investors who got burned.

Re:That shouldn't happen.

[Diesel Dave]

"So there will always be spam."
The translation is "Thus Always to Spammers" which of course means "Spammers will always get what they deserve" or more loosely "Death to Spammers".

Update from the Russian Police

[Vadim Makarov]

Well, the killing turned out to be an ordinary bulgrary gone awry. Here is a preliminary information from the police [lenta.ru] (in Russian). Sorry for disappointing those who hoped it's a revenge for spam, and also those who thought it's the dreaded Russian mafia. It is neither.

According to the police, he acquinted three women in a night club and invited them to his flat. The women mixed in a strong dormitive medication into wine ("Clofeline", traditionally ised in such scenarios by the crime) and, when the Mr. Kushnir went asleep, opened the door to accomplices. Unfurtunately, the dose of dormitive was not sufficient. Mr. Kushnir woke up and a fight ensued, during which he was beaten to death. A laptop, money and credit cards are missing from his flat. Also an underdress were left by one of the women in hurry. This is the only version the Police is considering now.

The article also says his company exists since 2000 and has had an anuual turnaround of mere $100,000-120,000. Its spamming activity was so visible that it got under investigation by the government, but no action was made against it due to the lack of aplicable laws. To avoid being charged in Russia, the company sent all its spams via an offshore company located (guess where!!!) in the USA. It also says the quality of language education the company has offered is reported to be quite low, with a high turnover of teachers (because they stop paying salary to everyone after a couple first months of employment) and no coherent education program. It only stayed afloat because of endless spamming.