Self Proclaimed Spam King Arrested in Las Vegas

Posted 08/05/2011 at 7:20am | by Paul Lilly

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Sanford Wallace, the man who calls himself the Spam King, surrendered himself to the FBI on Thursday during a trip to Las Vegas. Now he'll face the throne of justice for being (allegedly, of course) a general pain in the backside of email users everywhere, and in particular to Facebook, in which he already owes $711 million in civil damages from a suit dating back to 2009.

The 43-year-old accused spammer was indicted by a grand jury in San Jose on July 6 for several counts of fraud and other misdeeds involving email, and now also faces three counts of intentional damage to a protected computer and two counts of criminal contempt, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of California.

According to the indictment, Wallace's asshat antics include compromising 500,000 legitimate Facebook accounts as part of a scheme that resulted in more than 27 million spam messages traveling through the social network's servers. Wallace is said to have sent spam to Facebook users on three separate occasions, one in November 2008, again in December 2008, and a final time in February 2009.

Wallace is currently released on a $100,000 unsecured bond. If convicted, Wallace faces a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine for each count of email fraud, and 10 years + $250,000 for each count of intentional damage to a computer, plus any applicable damages for contempt.