Shah Brothers Claim Themselves Innocent

Missouri University (MU) alumni, Amir Shah and Osmaan Shah, who have been in federal custody since April 2009 on charges of spamming activities, have pleaded themselves innocent, reported columbiatribune on June 25, 2009.

It is learnt that Shah brothers were arrested in April 2009 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on 51 charges of fraud and conspiracy.

It was found during investigations that Amir was the guy who served as an "idea man" out of the two. He was the person who handled all the negotiation contracts in all of their businesses. In other words, it can be said that Amir was the mastermind of the entire spamming business of the duo, while Osmaan was the man responsible for all the computer-related operations. In fact, Osmaan's status in the conspiracy was that of a Chief Operating Officer. All this was done to make the deals look more realistic to people.

The 59-page long federal indictment says that the Shah duo outlined a detailed plan to send spam e-mails to atleast 8 Million students studying at over 2,000 universities and colleges.

According to reports, the brothers accumulated atleast $4 Million by spamming students with the e-mails promoting the sales of fake products. In addition to this, Osmaan has also been indicted of exploiting the equipment at the Missouri University in their illegal business.

It is stated in the FBI's indictment that Osmaan during an Internet chat with Amir in 2003 revealed that he had discovered a way of distributing millions of e-mails rapidly via MU system.

During investigations, the FBI saw that MU's computer network suffered huge damage due to the amount of bandwidth that the brothers used in their operations. The indictment says that the Shah brothers made use of China-based servers to send spam at a rate of nearly one million e-mails per hour.

The accused brothers were released after their parents deposited an unsecured bond of $50,000. One of the terms of their release is that they have to restrict using computers and the Internet in particular.

According to experts, the indictment will, however, hardly affect the large scale spamming activities going on worldwide.

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