Government Sends Spammers Message - Twice

Jun 01, 10:41 AM

Current Headlines: MySpace.com, the social networking Web site owned by News Corp., on Thursday settled a lawsuit against TheGlobe.com over more than 400,000 spam advertising messages sent to MySpace users.

Terms of the settlement are confidential, MySpace said in a statement. The company, based in Los Angeles, said an earlier court ruling in the case entitled it to $5.5 million in damages.

In a separate case, a 27-year-old man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and the U.S. authorities said that computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail messages they receive.

Robert Alan Soloway is accused of using networks of compromised "zombie" computers to send out millions upon millions of spam e- mail messages.

"He's one of the top 10 spammers in the world," said Tim Cranton, a lawyer for Microsoft who is senior director of the company's Worldwide Internet Safety Programs. "He's a huge problem for our customers."

The two developments highlight efforts by government and Internet industry officials as well as private groups to combat the proliferation of unwanted e-mail messages.

In the Soloway case, a U.S. grand jury in Seattle last week returned a 35-count indictment charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

Soloway pleaded not guilty Wednesday afternoon to all charges after a judge determined that - even with four bank accounts seized by the government - he was sufficiently well off to pay for his own lawyer.

He has been living in an luxury apartment and drives an expensive Mercedes convertible, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma. Prosecutors are seeking to have him forfeit $773,000 they say he made from his business, Newport Internet Marketing.

A public defender who represented Soloway at the hearing Wednesday declined to comment.

Prosecutors say Soloway used computers infected with malicious code to send out millions of junk e-mail messages since 2003. The computers are called "zombies" because owners typically have no idea their machines have been infected.

He continued his activities even after Microsoft won a $7 million civil judgment against him in 2005 and the operator of a small Internet service provider in Oklahoma won a $10 million judgment, prosecutors said.

Jeff Sullivan, a U.S. attorney, said Wednesday that the case was the first in the country in which prosecutors had used identity theft statutes to prosecute a spammer for taking over someone else's Internet domain name.

The Spamhaus Project rejoiced at his arrest. "Soloway has been a long-term nuisance on the Internet - both in terms of the spam he sent, and the people he duped to use his spam service," organizers wrote on Spamhaus.org.

In the MySpace case, TheGlobe, which is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said in a regulatory filing in May that it had paid MySpace $2.55 million as "full settlement" of the lawsuit and that it lacked the money to stay in business beyond Thursday.

A U.S. judge in Los Angeles had ruled in favor of MySpace in February, finding that TheGlobe had violated provisions of the so- called Can-Spam Act that regulates e-mail marketing.

Ed Cespedes, president of TheGlobe, did not return calls seeking comment. Tracy Akselrud, a MySpace spokeswoman, also did not respond to a call for comment.

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