‘Godfather of spam’ Ralsky gets 4+ years in prison |
The last time we checked in on spammer Alan Ralsky was in October 2005 where I said to let him have his day in court. Well, he did and it didn’t go so well for him – even after he cooperated fully with the prosecution:
Ralsky and Bradley were charged for conspiring to commit wire and mail fraud and violating the 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, according to the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. They were also charged with committing wire fraud and engaging in money laundering
Ralsky’s sentence was 51 months + five years probation while his son-in-law Scott Bradley received 40 months and five years probation too.
Did this post make you go hmm?
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Five years for a serial spammer doesn’t sound like all that much. He’ll be out in 2 and a half w/ good behavior. On one hand, I don’t think that it should be a crime for someone to offer their services to another, but at the same time, these spammers clearly take it too far. Not sure that we’ll ever really get rid of the problem, but I doubt that there’s the same power structure in the spammer world that existed for the Godfather. Because it’s so easy to do, a conviction like this will have just about as much success as the RIAA has in stopping millions from file sharing. You may catch a whale every now and then, but it’s too easy for other people to fill the void that they leave. I don’t really like it, but I guess I can learn to live with it.
Comment by Davis Freeberg — November 29, 2009 @ 9:29 pm PST