Spammer Robert Soloway Arrested

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."

Well, it's a start.

[AltGrendel]

Only a couple of... oh, lets say... thousand "Spam Kings" to go.

Minimum.

Re:Is 65 years excessive?

[Delirium Tremens]

It is not excessive. The guy is a world-wide nuisance with direct and indirect impact on communication efficiency, economy and personal health (stress, anger, you name it).

Sweet. I propose another arrest.

[wazzzup]

Can we then arrest someone at Microsoft who was responsible for making it so easy to create bots? In my opinion, Windows (and thus Microsoft) is an equal partner in the generation of spam we get today.

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.

Anyone else think we have our priorities mixed?

[StringBlade]

If convicted as charged, Soloway will face a maximum sentence of more than 65 years in prison and a fine of 250,000 dollars.

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.

Re:Is 65 years excessive?

[maxume]

You also have to be careful that you don't over estimate the damages. I would estimate that spam has damaged me to the extent of about $11 over the last five years. I would be satisfied if any individual responsible for more than $0.25 of that had to do a jumping jack, and any individual responsible for more than $2 of it had to do a somersault. Of course, with a billion of us getting spam, some of those guys are going to end up tired and dizzy.

A Punishment to Fit the Crime?

[GaryPatterson]

Bear with me for a bit...

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.

Why not a RICO prosecution?

[swb]

If there's that much organization involved, why not a RICO prosecution?

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 tacit involvement of the legitimate financial and IT community in spam if a few well-placed execs in those industries got nailed along with the rest of them.

Re:give hima real punishment...

[murphyje]

So, go pull a Superman III and start stealing fractions of cents from financial transactions. Clearly that can't be a crime because it's only annoying people. I mean, if I only steal half a cent from a hundred million people, what harm is there? A million dollars worth of harm, that's what. The effect on individuals is immaterial. Our laws don't go after how much you harmed one person. They go after how much harm you've done. If you walk around town with a can of spray paint and decorate a thousand mailboxes with a red dot, is that somehow less harmful than painting five mailboxes red? This is still just an annoyance. You're not going to suddenly stop getting your TV Guide subscription just because you have a red dot on your mailbox. The damage, however, is equated to the cost of a thousand mailboxes which would translate to about a hundred thousand dollars. No, not everybody will feel compelled to replace their mailbox right away. Every one of the houses, however, will be sold someday and the folks selling the houses will have to replace the spray painted mailboxes. The fact is, this particular spammer has more than likely cased damages far in excess of $250,000 and the specific charges against him must clearly be worth the 65 years projected incarceration.

Re:give hima real punishment...

[Kelbear]

Let's just be fair and penalize him for the amount of time that he's cost each person. Let's say a spam mail takes .2 seconds to delete. Hell, let's waive the cost in time and money for the development of anti-spam measures. Let's just keep it to .2 seconds per e-mail. Given the volume of time he's wasted, he's earned it all.

Re:give hima real punishment...

[Ed_Pinkley]

Here are some fuzzy numbers from google / wiki.
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.)