Las Vegas resident Sanford Wallace — aka "Spamford" or "Spam King" — Wallace received the sentence on Monday (June 13), and was also ordered him to pay US$310,628.55 in damages. Last year he had pleaded guilty to one count of fraud.
According to the prosecutors, Wallace had devised "a scheme from approximately November 2008 through March 2009 to send spam messages to Facebook users that compromised approximately 500,000 legitimate Facebook accounts, and resulted in over 27 million spam messages being sent through Facebook's servers."
Sanford ‘Spam King’ Wallace Sentenced to Two-and-a-Half Years in Custody for Spamming Facebook Users: — San Franc… https://t.co/zjbCh1vhGV
— FBI SanFrancisco (@FBISanFrancisco) June 15, 2016
A skillful hacker, Wallace managed to earn money from spam by sending thousands of fraudulent messages and emails that redirected users to websites he was affiliated with — the higher the websites' traffic, the larger Wallace's profit.
Previous civil lawsuits brought forward by Facebook, Myspace and other tech companies had resulted in almost US$1 billion of outstanding default judgements — which were never paid. In 2011, though, he was hit with criminal charges (fraud) for the first time.
‘Spam King’ Sanford Wallace Gets 30 Months in Prison https://t.co/mLt5oUCPqr pic.twitter.com/ckSqEavF7k
— Mayuresh Shilotri (@mshilotri) June 16, 2016
While a prison sentence for spamming can seem a little harsh, the prosecutors explained it was the only way to wean Wallace off his malicious practices.
"The defendant's history demonstrates that he has yet to suffer a consequence — other than a default judgment that cannot be collected — for his spamming activities," they wrote in a memorandum.
