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US arrests internet 'spam king'
A man nicknamed the "spam king" for allegedly sending out millions of junk e-mails has been arrested in the US.
Robert Soloway, 27, was arrested in Seattle, Washington, after being indicted on charges of mail fraud, identity theft and money laundering.
Mr Soloway has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Prosecutors say Mr Soloway became one of the world's biggest spammers, using computers secretly infected with orders to send out millions of his e-mails.
Such computers are known as "zombies" because their owners often have no idea they have been hijacked for another purpose.
Identity theft laws
According to prosecutors, Mr Soloway was responsible for tens of millions of unsolicited e-mails promoting his own company between November 2003 and May 2007.
He is said to have frequently changed the web address of his internet marketing business to avoid being caught.
A US lawyer said Mr Soloway was the first person to be prosecuted for sending out spam e-mails using federal laws against identity theft.
Prosecutors want to seize the sum of $773,000 (£391,000) that Mr Soloway is said to have made from his firm.
If convicted of all the charges, he also faces a fine of $250,000 (£126,500) and a maximum prison term of 65 years.
A man considered to be one of the world's top spammers has been arrested and faces criminal prosecution for allegedly sending billions of illegal, unwanted e-mails a day, according to a press report Thursday.
Robert Soloway, a 27-year-old Seattle resident dubbed the "Spam King" by federal authorities and exasperated Web users, allegedly ran his business from his apartment, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
A federal grand jury indictment handed down Wednesday accuses Soloway of 35 criminal counts arising from the operation of his business, Newport Internet Marketing Corp. The charges include fraud, money laundering and identity theft.
Soloway is accused of violating the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which criminalizes large, commercial e-mail messages sent using an unauthorized computer or with the intent to hide the e-mail's original source. The allegations could put Soloway in prison for decades, the newspaper reported.
Federal prosecutors are also seeking $772,998 from Soloway, which represents the proceeds of his activity, the newspaper reported.
Soloway allegedly advertised online marketing services to unwitting customers who ended up paying for spam e-mails to be sent from "hijacked computers" using their names, according to the Post-Intelligencer.
Anti-spam advocates celebrated news of Soloway's arrest.
"It's extremely gratifying," Neil Schwartzman, the executive director for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, told the Post-Intelligencer. Schwartzman said that Soloway did not only spam people, but also sought revenge on anti-spammers by using "mail bombings."
"Truly, this is a really bad guy," Schwartzman told the newspaper.
Authorities said Soloway, in an apparent effort to hide his true identity online, constantly shifted domains, including registering with Chinese Internet service providers.
Additionally, he used slave computers, called "botnets," to send spam that advertised his corporate Web sites, which contained false headers to obscure their true origins, the newspaper reported.
Robert Alan Soloway, one of the most persistent professional spammers, was indicted by a grand jury in Seattle, Washington, on charges that include fraud, money laundering, and identity theft. The indictment followed a years-long joint investigation by the Washington State Attorney General's Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Internal Revenue Service Department of Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI), and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).
Soloway has been a long term nuisance on the internet. He has been sending enormous amounts of spam for years, filling mailboxes and mail servers with unsolicited and unwanted junk email. In addition, he has fraudulently marketed his spam services to others as legitimate 'opt-in' services when they were anything but that, duping innocent users and then failing to provide promised customer support or refunds. Because Soloway spammed through hijacked computers and open proxies, he has repeatedly violated both the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act of 1984 and the CAN-SPAM law of 2003.
Soloway first appeared in the Spamhaus Block List (SBL) in 2001. In 2003, he was listed on Spamhaus's Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO), a list of the world's "worst of the worst" criminal spammers. Spamhaus spamtraps continued to receive spam solicitations from Soloway advertising his services through the weekend before today's indictment.
Soloway's violations of the U.S. CAN-SPAM law and various state anti-spam laws resulted in his being sued successfully by a number of plaintiffs, including Microsoft Corporation and Robert Braver, owner of an Oklahoma-based ISP. Both Microsoft and Braver received damage awards of millions of dollars. Soloway never paid these awards, claiming that he lived off of the proceeds of a family trust and was therefore "judgement-proof."
In September 2005 in Oklahoma City, after Soloway had fired his lawyers and then failed to appear to represent himself in court, U.S. District Judge Ralph G. Thompson issued a permanent injunction against Soloway, forbidding him to continue sending spam that violated the CAN-SPAM act. Soloway ignored this injunction as well and continued to spam.
Today, Soloway was arrested and brought before the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, where he was indicted on multiple counts of money laundering, wire fraud, mail fraud, and identity theft by a federal grand jury. If convicted of all charges, he could theoretically face up to 65 years in prison. Although his custodial sentence if convicted is likely to be substantially less than 65 years, he nonetheless faces a significant stay in the U.S. federal penitentiary system.
Spamhaus commends the Seattle FBI and U.S. Attorney for ensuring that the indictment contains both spam-related and non-spam-related counts, and on preparing an indictment which shows so clearly the profile of the typical spammer's activities, such as fraud, identity theft, and other online deception. Spamhaus recognises that a successful prosecution requires careful preparation which inevitably takes longer than the victims of the crime wish. Careful preparation is essential in cases involving CAN-SPAM violations, since the CAN-SPAM Act does not yet have extensive case-law to support it.
Robert Soloway, 27, was arrested in Seattle, Washington, after being indicted on charges of mail fraud, identity theft and money laundering.
Mr Soloway has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Prosecutors say Mr Soloway became one of the world's biggest spammers, using computers secretly infected with orders to send out millions of his e-mails.
Such computers are known as "zombies" because their owners often have no idea they have been hijacked for another purpose.
Identity theft laws
According to prosecutors, Mr Soloway was responsible for tens of millions of unsolicited e-mails promoting his own company between November 2003 and May 2007.
He is said to have frequently changed the web address of his internet marketing business to avoid being caught.
A US lawyer said Mr Soloway was the first person to be prosecuted for sending out spam e-mails using federal laws against identity theft.
Prosecutors want to seize the sum of $773,000 (£391,000) that Mr Soloway is said to have made from his firm.
If convicted of all the charges, he also faces a fine of $250,000 (£126,500) and a maximum prison term of 65 years.
A man considered to be one of the world's top spammers has been arrested and faces criminal prosecution for allegedly sending billions of illegal, unwanted e-mails a day, according to a press report Thursday.
Robert Soloway, a 27-year-old Seattle resident dubbed the "Spam King" by federal authorities and exasperated Web users, allegedly ran his business from his apartment, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
A federal grand jury indictment handed down Wednesday accuses Soloway of 35 criminal counts arising from the operation of his business, Newport Internet Marketing Corp. The charges include fraud, money laundering and identity theft.
Soloway is accused of violating the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which criminalizes large, commercial e-mail messages sent using an unauthorized computer or with the intent to hide the e-mail's original source. The allegations could put Soloway in prison for decades, the newspaper reported.
Federal prosecutors are also seeking $772,998 from Soloway, which represents the proceeds of his activity, the newspaper reported.
Soloway allegedly advertised online marketing services to unwitting customers who ended up paying for spam e-mails to be sent from "hijacked computers" using their names, according to the Post-Intelligencer.
Anti-spam advocates celebrated news of Soloway's arrest.
"It's extremely gratifying," Neil Schwartzman, the executive director for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, told the Post-Intelligencer. Schwartzman said that Soloway did not only spam people, but also sought revenge on anti-spammers by using "mail bombings."
"Truly, this is a really bad guy," Schwartzman told the newspaper.
Authorities said Soloway, in an apparent effort to hide his true identity online, constantly shifted domains, including registering with Chinese Internet service providers.
Additionally, he used slave computers, called "botnets," to send spam that advertised his corporate Web sites, which contained false headers to obscure their true origins, the newspaper reported.
Robert Alan Soloway, one of the most persistent professional spammers, was indicted by a grand jury in Seattle, Washington, on charges that include fraud, money laundering, and identity theft. The indictment followed a years-long joint investigation by the Washington State Attorney General's Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Internal Revenue Service Department of Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI), and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).
Soloway has been a long term nuisance on the internet. He has been sending enormous amounts of spam for years, filling mailboxes and mail servers with unsolicited and unwanted junk email. In addition, he has fraudulently marketed his spam services to others as legitimate 'opt-in' services when they were anything but that, duping innocent users and then failing to provide promised customer support or refunds. Because Soloway spammed through hijacked computers and open proxies, he has repeatedly violated both the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act of 1984 and the CAN-SPAM law of 2003.
Soloway first appeared in the Spamhaus Block List (SBL) in 2001. In 2003, he was listed on Spamhaus's Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO), a list of the world's "worst of the worst" criminal spammers. Spamhaus spamtraps continued to receive spam solicitations from Soloway advertising his services through the weekend before today's indictment.
Soloway's violations of the U.S. CAN-SPAM law and various state anti-spam laws resulted in his being sued successfully by a number of plaintiffs, including Microsoft Corporation and Robert Braver, owner of an Oklahoma-based ISP. Both Microsoft and Braver received damage awards of millions of dollars. Soloway never paid these awards, claiming that he lived off of the proceeds of a family trust and was therefore "judgement-proof."
In September 2005 in Oklahoma City, after Soloway had fired his lawyers and then failed to appear to represent himself in court, U.S. District Judge Ralph G. Thompson issued a permanent injunction against Soloway, forbidding him to continue sending spam that violated the CAN-SPAM act. Soloway ignored this injunction as well and continued to spam.
Today, Soloway was arrested and brought before the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, where he was indicted on multiple counts of money laundering, wire fraud, mail fraud, and identity theft by a federal grand jury. If convicted of all charges, he could theoretically face up to 65 years in prison. Although his custodial sentence if convicted is likely to be substantially less than 65 years, he nonetheless faces a significant stay in the U.S. federal penitentiary system.
Spamhaus commends the Seattle FBI and U.S. Attorney for ensuring that the indictment contains both spam-related and non-spam-related counts, and on preparing an indictment which shows so clearly the profile of the typical spammer's activities, such as fraud, identity theft, and other online deception. Spamhaus recognises that a successful prosecution requires careful preparation which inevitably takes longer than the victims of the crime wish. Careful preparation is essential in cases involving CAN-SPAM violations, since the CAN-SPAM Act does not yet have extensive case-law to support it.