Spammers stung for $US230 million - but who collects?

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 15 May 2008 03:56

Opinion and Analysis

A US court has made a $US230 million judgement against a pair of spammers, one of them the notorious Sanford "Spamford" Wallace. But the money might not be going where you would expect.

If there is any money, that is. Wallace already owes the US Federal Trade Commission $US4 million from a recent case. And the latest decision was a default judgement, which means the defendants did not show up in court. Observers suggest collecting the award may prove difficult.

Who stands to gain? The judgement, made under the CAN SPAM law, was based on a penalty of $US300 per message. But it won't be going to the more than 700,000 MySpace members that received spam messages from the duo. Oh no. They were just the people inconvenienced by the junk mail, and in some cases tricked into visiting porn sites.

The case was brought by MySpace, which alleged the pair obtained members' usernames and passwords through a phishing campaign, and then used those accounts - as well as others they had created - to send the spam messages.

The company claimed this caused it to incur costs associated with the delivery of those messages and with dealing with resulting customer complaints. So that's where the money - if it can be found - is going.

I think I have a better idea.

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