A man named Sanford Wallace gave himself the cutest nicknames: The Spam King and Spamford. Since the Internet’s infancy in 1995, he made millions bombarding people with useless websites. It’s not so cute now. This spammer goes to prison.
In August 2015, Sanford ‘Spam King’ or ‘Spamford’ ?Wallace plead guilty to ?e-mail fraud and contempt of court. This week, Wallace was sentenced to 30 months in prison. What was the comtempt of court charge about? In a previous court case, Wallace was legally forbidden to access Facebook. Wallace broke that ruling. Wallace is ordered to pay well over $100,000 to the Facebook users he bombarded and potentially ripped off. After his prison sentence, King will be on probation for five years. He’ll be banned from all computer activity, except for activity supervised by a probation officer. Wallace will be ordered to undergo mental health treatment. In 1995, Wallace launched Cyber Promotions. He flooded emails and faxes with junk. Tech corporations from America Online to Facebook filed civil lawsuits against him, and won. ?According to court documents, Wallace bombarded 550,000 Facebook users with over 27 million pieces of spam in the late 2000s. In 2009, he was told to not log on Facebook…ever. After this, according to court documents, he created aliases and fake domain names. He’d get Facebook accounts, then lure people to click a link. That link would download their friends name and send them to other websites.
This is a warning to anyone in the spam business. Don’t do it! And if you’re in the spam business, get out! Obviously, there’s cracking down harder than ever. I have a concern about Sanford Wallace. The man has spammed for over 20 years, and didn’t stop. Not even when threatened with lawsuits and prison did he stop. So I wonder, can he stop spamming? Is this an addiction that’s beyond his control? If so, then shouldn’t he be evaluated in prison? Why wait until he gets out? Was 30 months too harsh of a sentence for the crime? Furthermore, how will the Spam King do in prison?