‘Spam King’ Sentenced to Nearly Three Years in Jail

Robert Alan Soloway, whom investigators call the "Spam King", has been given a 47-month prison sentence after being charged of a number of offences.

According to investigators, Soloway operated Newport Internet Marketing Corp. in Seattle that offered services of "broadcast e-mail". Soloway, as per the government, sent massive number of spam mails promoting the service by using forged and misleading headers.

Moreover, Soloway admitted in court in March 2008 that he was engaged in an e-mail fraud and did not file an income tax return.

Also, as per the investigators, Soloway employed a software called Dark Mailer to infiltrate botnets -network of compromised PCs - that he utilized to deliver bulks of anonymous e-mails. He also distributed advertisements for e-mail clients through legitimate e-mail addresses without informing their owners.

Furthermore, Soloway violated the Can-Spam Act by using false header titles in his spam mails. The software he employed automatically replaced the recipient's name with that of Soloway's, making it seems that the former e-mailed the message to herself/himself or used fake addresses in the 'sender' field. The objective of all these tactics was to bypass any spam-blocking program that might have been on the victim's computer.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors said that between November 2003 and May 2007, Soloway sent several millions of spam messages to promote his company that offered software for sending broadcast e-mails.

Furthermore, he kept on sending junk messages even after Microsoft won a $7 Million civil suit against him in 2005 and even after a small ISP operator in Oklahoma won a similar $10 Million suit.

Soloway said that he was fully responsible for sending out the large number of spam mails, as reported by komonews on July 22, 2008. Soloway said that he would neither say that he was innocent nor say that the government had made a mistake. He added that it was entirely his responsibility and whatever he did was short of right action.

Apart from serving the 47-month sentence, Soloway has also been ordered to pay $700,004 in compensation for the ill-gotten gains he churned from his long-standing spam operation.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 7/30/2008