US Internet 'Spam King' arrested

Source: Yahoo News/AFP

US prosecutors said they captured on Wednesday a nefarious Internet marketer responsible so much junk e-mail they called him "Spam King."

Robert Soloway, 27, 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.

"Spam is a scourge of the Internet, and Robert Soloway is one of its most prolific practitioners," said US Attorney for the Western District of Washington Jeffrey Sullivan.

"Our investigators dubbed him the 'Spam King' because he is responsible for millions of spam emails."

Between November of 2003 and May of 2007 Soloway "spammed" tens of millions of e-mail messages to promote websites at which his company, Newport Internet Marketing, sold products and services, according to prosecutors.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070530/tc_afp/usarrestinternetspam_070530205449

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Now him and all the other cretins who do this kind of thing, they are one group I would sincerely consider sending to Gitmo - yeah, I work in IT.

any dent in the crap I receive in my spam folder. I can only hope.

Mz Pip
:dem:

I'm just an ordinary user, but spammers are the vermin of the web. I wish we had the 'puter equivalent of the "do not call" list: I do not want to buy a penis enlarger, I have enough insurance, and I'm not interested in losing 50 pounds in two months (well actually I am, but I doubt any herbal product you're trying to sell me could actually do that).

Now go away.

spammers don't actually come to your house with a full set of keys to your mailboxes if your in an apartment, they don't make you watch your dog for part of the day, they don't cut down pristine rain forests for newsprint and they certainly DO drop ads for weight loss on your doorstep.

I've actually noticed that since the whole anti-spam thing began that all those 'Viagra' like ads (herbal viagra on TV?) starting showing up on local TV. You don't suppose the whole spam thing, which IF organized and properly legislated, would have fulfilled the social and economic needs of the business community for advertising, and might have been a dodge so that all those ads could simply be poured into the old media.

Could it be that all those 'fake' weight loss companies using that means to reach their customers as opposed to the decades of other 'fake' weight loss companies using an old method, were becoming successful?

Could it be that the media tended to overstate the problems of spam because MEDIA companies were being inundating with 'new' customers more than willing to tell them why their idiots? Or large corporations who are generally more geared to 'issuing' ads rather than receiving them...didn't like the cost and so convinced the average user, whose problems with 'spam' tended to come from inexperience, to go along with playing definitions of what an email is?

Vermin? or competitors to large monopolies

Spam drives some small business into the ground by consuming server resources and band-width. It's a bit difficult to run a webserver when the only two email address that exist on it get 800-1500 spam letters a day to filter. Not to mention the brute force password attacks against services like ssh and yes the damn rouge bots are a problem too.

Yeah and some drive themselves into the ground by not knowing what they are doing...like how to re-scale simple pictures.

I don't many 2@biz packages that have clients worrying about brute attacks -- besides those jerks usually 'zombie' computers and they do it most of the times through non-spam email through crummy operating systems that don't patch like small businesses...just like I 'heard' about even big companies that still have their old modems alive and well and waiting ever so patiently for a 'war call'.

There are a lot of problems that could be solved to keep the black hats at bay, but what are you going to do?

I don't know what server package your running...but can this advice help you? I am wondering if the solution regarding "Using 'iptables' to block the attack" might be a help. Unless your network is a little more complicated and running another solution.

Apologies if you've been there and done that...it's a complicated problem.

in regard to rescaling simple pictures? I might learn something.

Kill Him.

I remember the days when spamming usenet would get you seriously flamed and possibly email bombed-- for a while there spammers had short online life spans. Sigh-- those days are gone.

Can you really get rich sending out a few million e-mails with that subject line?

The rate of conversion need not be high.

L-

Is that people will respond to that shit, but turn away from something honest. Everything's got to have some razzle dazzle marketing scheme. Nobody will believe the straight truth.

These SOB's are so fucking arrogant, haha, hope they send him away for a good long time.

and blind. I imagine this cretin will bombard the court system with a phalanx of high priced lawyers, just as he bombards the in-boxes of every internet user with worthless, tasteless spam.

We all know there are two justice systems in this country: one for the rich and one for the poor. I doubt this festering boil on the nation's ass will get what he truly deserves. I've seen it happen too many times to have faith that justice will be served this time.

That's enough to put the fear of god into most of these types of people. Even if he just gets a couple of years, that's enough to teach this weanie a lesson. A longer sentence would scare the pee out of the rest of them, but I really don't believe the justice system is supposed to destroy one person's life to "send a message".

I'm glad they caught him, but this definitely won't end most Spam.

It takes me a whole half a second to delete it.

:wtf:

Which, while not in the same league as child molestation, are still serious crimes.

Lucky you.

I've set up lengthy message rules, have lots of blocked addresses and I still have to delete 100+ spam emails/day. This task takes more than "half a second", I assure you.

I'd ditch the addresses but they are used for my business. The spam leeches would do the same thing with a new address anyway.

May the Spam King rot in hell.

How I've suddenly become the target of "Christian" spammers. Within the past few weeks I've received multiple unsolicited invitations to subscribe to "Christian" magazines, buy "Christian" insurance, and refinance my non-existent house with "Christian" lenders. I'm not even a Christian! I haven't signed up for any "free" offers (I quickly learned that's how they get your e-mail address to spam), so it really puzzles me. I don't just delete them, I go to the web-sites and "unsubscribe" - which takes more than a few seconds - otherwise I get the same messages again and again.

The only way I figure this could happen is if they got my E-mail address from someone else who unwisely used the "send this message to a friend" feature on a "Christian" web-site. Obviously, it wasn't someone who knew me very well a-tall!

Had to buy hundreds of dollars worth of software to block spam for your clients? No?? Didn't think so.

are ruining good search results. you have to wade through tons of pages of garbage and selling sites to find the results you want. And now, the spam fax mess is starting to spread to text messaging, where people often are charged for the texts they receive, not to mention actively bothered by spam texts.

The hundreds of hours honest webmasters have to put in to keep up with Google's newest spam filters to keep from getting caught in them. I hate spammers.

Every varmint who can send out 10 million emails a day claims to be the "King of Spam."
Spammers have been doing that for over 10 years.
In the mean time, here's to a brief drop-off in spam volume. :toast:

27 and a king.

:eyes:

Lock him in a room with loudspeakers and, at random, have messages that are like the subject lines come through the speakers, loud.

"YOU CAN ADD 3 INCHES TO YOUR PENIS"

"FANTASTIC VITAMIN SUPPLEMENTS FOR FREE"

"REFINANCE YOUR HOME MORTGAGE FOR PENNIES"

All day and all night, that ought to teach him how aggravating he has been to so many of us :grr:

Fifty lashes minimum.

He got what he deserved, too.

Hang him high.

No other sentence they give this guy, if found guilty, will be too severe.
He has hurt too many people on earth.