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Spammer Pleads Guilty to Stock Fraud, Faces 7 Years in Prison

Paul Lilly — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:00:32 -0500

Alan Ralsky, a West Bloomfield, Michigan native, has pleaded guilty to allegations of wire and mail frauds, money laundering, and of violating the CAN-SPAM Act. As a result, Raslky faces up to 7 years in prison.

"Alan Ralsky was at one time the world's most notorious illegal spammer," said U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg. "Today Ralsky, his son-in-law Scott Bradley, and three of their co-conspirators stand convicted for their roles in running an international spamming operation that sent billions of illegal email advertisements to pump up Chinese 'penny' stocks and then reap profits by using trades in these same stocks while others bought at the inflated price."

In addition to duping recipients with falsified emails, the conspirators used software that made their messages hard to track, used illegal methods to get around spam blockers, falsified headers, and used proxy computers to relay the spam and falsely registered domain names, according to the Department of Justice. Their efforts reportedly brought in over $3 million.

While many of cases are still spending, Scott Bradley, Ralsky's 38-year-old son-in-law, pleaded guilty to the same charges and faces up to 78 months in prison and $1 million fine. John Brown, 45, of Fresno California, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, of violating the CAN-SPAM Act, and conspiracy to commit computer fraud. Brown faces up to 63 months in prison and $75,000 fine. William Neil, 46, also of Fresno, California, and James Fite, 36, of Culver City, California, both pleaded guilty in the case. They, along with everyone else involved, will be sentenced on October 29, 2009.

Software Pirate Gets 41 Months in Prison, Loses His Ferrari

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:28:37 -0600

Timothy Kyle Dunaway, a Texas-based software pirate, who had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of criminal copyright violation, has been handed a 41-month jail term by a US District Judge. His clandestine network included 40 websites hosted on servers based in Austria and Malaysia.

He is said to have sold pirated business software through these websites. His activities are estimated to have cost $1 million to software authors.

Not only has he been ordered to pay $810,257 in damages, but the court has also sequestered two of his most cherished belongings, a Ferrari 348 TB and a Rolex watch. After being unnoticed for four prolific years, his business eventually came on the government’s radar screen in May 2008.

Image Credit: Hbuhsd

Its Not Good To Be The Spam King

Chris Moody — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:44:08 -0500

Unlike other kings, spam king Edward "Eddie" Davidson decided that he didn’t like his new royal domain at the minimum-security federal prison in Florence, Colorado. After serving five weeks of his 21 month sentence his Royal ‘Spamness’ hopped a ride with his wife when she came to visit.

"He jumped in the car with his wife," said Will Cochenour with Lakewood police. "When they were leaving, he forced her in the car, brought them home and left after a change in clothing.” Davidson was last seen Sunday afternoon in his wife's 2006 silver Toyota Sequoia.

Davidson's Power Promoters spamming network promoted junk between 2002 and 2005, gumming up inboxes everywhere.

The U.S. Marshals are leading the search, with help from FBI, IRS and the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force. This time however they are sure not to take him back to Club Fed, but somewhere with a bit more security, and you can bet he’ll be in for a longer stretch of time too. This is providing that one of his spammed subjects doesn’t run into him first and tar and feather him. While this would make it a great disguise, it is sure to remove hair coming off (ouch).

If you are out looking for the spam king, be sure to imagine him without his royal accoutrements as pictured below.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here

Thomas McDonald — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 16:34:56 -0600

25 to Life is an embarrassingly bad game, but at least it tells you it’s going to suck—and suck mightily—in its very first scene. The opening cinematic is a ludicrous potpourri of overripe urban cliches, giving you fair warning that what lies ahead will be contrived, derivative, and ultimately, insulting.

We’re introduced to the main character—a black man named Freeze who has a kid, a woman, and a home, and just wants to get outta da thug life, but he has to pull off just one last job, and then he’s out, for good! We’re supposed to identify with him—and even feel bad for him—but that’s a bit tough to do after the game’s first mission, which has Freeze indiscriminately kill hundreds of police officers.

And, even though 25 to Life tries for balance by letting you play as the good guys (for those of you out in Subjective Morality Land, that would be the police), the developers clearly hate cops, because they give them the dumbest AI this side of MS Word Grammar Check.

As someone who’s watched the Godfather films a dozen times, I’d be a hypocrite to pile on “gangsta” culture for its exaltation of violence and crime, but there is a difference. Most quality mob stories are classical drama with a solid and consistent, albeit warped, internal ethic. Tony Soprano is low-brow capo, but his repeated mantra that “there have to be consequences” is a rock-solid conservative principle.

Thug culture, on the other hand, tends to lack any recognizable ethic beyond “get rich or die tryin’” and “get over here, bee-atch.” Sure, I think the music, the clothes, the slang, the entire detritus of urban culture is 10 pounds of crap in a five-pound bag, but as a middle-age, middle-class, married, straight, white, conservative Catholic, suburban male, my opinion on the subject is probably less than authoritative.

Sometimes you can suspend your better nature for the purpose of good entertainment. Grand Theft Auto is a corrosive game, but at least it’s not a bad game. 25 to Life is both. It reminds us that clever gameplay is its own redemption, which leaves this little slice of viciousness unredeemed.

25 to Life

Josh Norem — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 16:13:15 -0600

It’s not often a game like 25 to Life comes along. A game so lame and insulting that it makes you want to reformat your hard drive after uninstalling it, just to get the stench off the platters.

Crap shooters have been around since the birth of PC gaming, but blatant rip-off titles like this GTA-wannabe deserve to be shunned, renounced, and burned in a fiery pit for the abomination they are.

You’ll play three different characters as you progress through this third-person shooter—two gangsters and one police officer—all intertwined in a cheesy tale of betrayal and revenge. The variation in how each character’s story plays out is breathtaking. You start as a character named Freeze, and in the very first level you slaughter hundreds of cops. Next you play as a cop, slaughtering hundreds of bad guys. Then, you are another gangster who has to slaughter hundreds of bad guys, and so on and so forth.

The levels are so incredibly linear and repetitive that it’s laughable and boring. You move forward, kill everyone you see, pick up the floating health pack, turn the next corner, and repeat, until the silly and profanity-laden cutscene arrives. The entire six-hour experience is like this. Once you’ve played this game for five minutes, you’ve seen everything it has to offer.

The multiplayer experience is thankfully better than the single-player, but that’s not saying much. It’s essentially team deathmatch, where you and your posse run around trying to kill everyone on the other team. It’s reminiscent of early Quake deathmatch, or any other rudimentary online shooter.

The real treat is that when you accomplish side objectives in the single-player portion of the game (such as 12 head shots in one level, for example), you’re awarded special jewelry and other accoutrements in multiplayer, so other players will recognize your skill. Sadly, the interface is so awkward that just entering a server is a chore.

We also experienced several bugs, including vertigo-inducing screen-spinning, audio bugs, and cutscenes playing way too fast to comprehend.

Need we even bother saying that you shouldn’t buy this game?

Month Reviewed: April 2006

Verdict: 2

URL: www.25tolife.com