MySpace Wins An Uncollectable $234 Million Award In Spam Case
from the sending-a-message? dept
Last month, we wrote about how MySpace had won its case against Sanford “Spamford” Wallace — the infamous 1990s “Spam King” who (despite losing many court battles and owing millions in fines) simply can’t seem to give up his obsession with scammy marketing techniques. The win was a default judgment, mainly because Wallace simply disappeared and stopped responding to court requests. Today, a judge ruled on the punishment, officially awarding MySpace $234 million from Wallace and his associate Walter Rines. Given Wallace’s disappearing act (which he’s done in the past as well) it’s unlikely that MySpace will ever see a dime of the money, but that hasn’t stopped the company from touting this as the largest ever award under CAN SPAM. Amusingly, the extremely short court ruling also bars Wallace from setting up any new MySpace profiles. It doesn’t say anything about Facebook, though, so perhaps that’s where we’ll see him next…
Filed Under: can spam, fines, sanford wallace, social networks, spam, spamford, walter rines
Companies: myspace
Comments on “MySpace Wins An Uncollectable $234 Million Award In Spam Case”
Can't one be arrested
Can’t one be arrested and imprisoned for unpaid fines?
Next time he shows up, throw him in jail and keep him there for unpaid fines.
Re: Can't one be arrested
“Can’t one be arrested and imprisoned for unpaid fines?
Next time he shows up, throw him in jail and keep him there for unpaid fines.”
What a terrible concept.
One could jail anybody for anything; simply by making sure they get more fines than they’ll ever be able to pay and then getting them jailed for not paying them.
[SARCASM]That’s not a step towards being able to totally control your population… not at all.[/SARCASM]
Congratulations
At least you won!
Re: Congratulations
>At least you won!
You forgot “A new Black 3G iPhone.”
How’s that ZunePhone coming, Steve-o?
I can’t wait for WWDC.
D.B. Cooper FTW
haha lol
i thought that this was a spam thing at first lol i hate myspace. “give us ur info and we’ll notify you of when your friends are acting stupid lol”
IRS
Since MySpace knows the debt is uncollectable they need to write it off and notify the IRS that Spamford and partner profitted by that amount before the pair have a chance to file for bankruptcy and discharge the debt. Spamford can’t hide forever and tax evasion can put him in prison unlike failure to pay that judgement to MySpace.
Great
> It doesn’t say anything about Facebook, though, so perhaps that’s where we’ll see him next…
Stop giving him ideas!
Stop Spam
All spammers will stop sending Spam when no one opens a spam email. Short and simple solution.
MySpace has a worldwide network of ‘informants’ perhaps they should offer a reward of say 1% of the damages they actually recover (to MySpace members of course) for the location of Mr Wallace…
Haha, I love that idea AC
MySpace can sponsor a 2 Million dollar (or 1% of actual recovery) “Where’s Wallace” contest. Forget looking for that Waldo character….
One again, proving the maxim that...
…there is no such as an ex-spammer. Not so far, at least: there are zero recorded cases.
A quibble with the description, though: what Spamford does isn’t “scammy marketing techniques”; it’s abuse. It’s merely clothed in marketing in order to persuade the gullible and naive that it has some legitimate basis.
Here’s an analogy, which I’ve often use to counter the misleading, vacuous “free speech” arguments made by spam-supporting parasites: if I print out the Bill of Rights, wrap it around a brick, and throw it through your living room window, that’s not free speech: that’s vandalism. Or if I show up in front of your house with a 50,000-watt PA and proceed to read the Bill of Rights out loud at 3 AM, that’s not free speech: it’s disturbing the peace. Similarly, what Spamford and Rines and all the other spammers, scammers, phishers, spyware installers, etc. do isn’t marketing: it’s abuse. The “marketing”, if any, is incidental and irrelevant.
Re: One again, proving the maxim that...
I dont think about spam as disturbing the peace.
THEy dont booter me any more, I use GMAIL, and bever have to think about spam again . spam? what is this?
“Next time he shows up, throw him in jail and keep him there for unpaid fines.”
What a terrible concept.”
No, just do nothing and let him continue to amass wealth by being a scumbag.(sarcasm) It is not just a case of not paying fines, he is so arrogant he is now refusing to even show up in court. And yes (not so)Evil Mike, if you amass wealth by harassing or scamming people you should be tossed in jail when you choose to disappear to avoid penalties.
FREE VIAGRA
No doctors prescription required!!
100% Effective, keep her going for 10 HOURS+
She’ll love these blue pills, just like smarties…
Buy online at http://www.F&CKSPAM.com
Kettle, Pot, Pot, Kettle
This is very funny coming from myspace considering their humble spam and junk mail beginnings.
Yeah, they are hypocrites considering they themselves went over to friendster.com to spam the users all to get the friendster.com users to come over to myspace.com.
The sources are out there if you want to go find them.
Major blow for spammers
This is a heavy blow for commercial spammers and they may slow down their activity after this whooping fine amount.Only a few anti spam techniques techniques have succeeded in the battle with spammers and one of them is Abaca’s ReceiverNet service. ReceiverNet characterizes each protected user based on the percentage of spam they receive and then uses those reputations to rate the incoming message flow. ReceiverNet is effective in protecting against existing and future spam techniques. For more information log on to http://abaca.com/.
Those spammers should be jailed
“It doesn’t say anything about Facebook, though, so perhaps that’s where we’ll see him next…”
Close – he’s now behind a relentless spam operation on youtube, e.g. see:
http://www.youtube.com/user/jackie40heath
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/ezmp3grab.com