MySpace Wins a Big One, Is Scott Richter the Next Target?

May 14, 2008 No comments

MySpace just won a $230 million judgment against Spamford Wallace and his partner Walter Rines for violations of CAN-SPAM and California anti-phishing laws, plus attorney fees. Ole Spamford was proud to be the Spam King and I’m sure he’ll find a way to show off now that he holds the record for the largest award ever in a spam related case.

MySpace won when Wallace and Rines failed to show, which means that there will be some kind of appeal, dragging this out further. The pair was accused of using their own as well as other’s phished accounts to send 730,000 messages promoting ring tones and other money making schemes. CAN-SPAM authorized $100 per violation, which is trebled when the messages are sent “willfully and knowingly.” 730K messages at $300 each is $219 million, so I think the real number is actually 736,000 messages based on the actual award in the article.

What is most interesting to me was the short snippet at the very end of the article: “MySpace has another anti-spam case pending against a high-profile defendant, Scott Richter, who it claims gained access to MySpace profiles using stolen passwords and then sent spam bulletins from those accounts.”