A notorious “Spam King” and his partner now owe MySpace about $230 million in damages after a federal judge awarded the popular online hangout what is believed to be the largest anti-spam judgment ever.

The judgment is a big victory for MySpace, although service providers often have a tough time collecting such awards. But even if the News Corp.-owned site never collects, it hopes the judgment deters other spammers.
“Anybody who’s been thinking about engaging in spam is going to say, “Wow, I better not go there,” MySpace’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigham, told The Associated press on Tuesday. “Spammers don’t want to be prosecuted. They are there to make money. It’s our job to send a message to stop them.”
U.S District Judge Audrey B. Collins in Los Angeles ruled in MySpace’s favor Monday after Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines failed to show up for a court hearing.
Wallace earned the monikers, “Spam King” and “Spamford” as head of a company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s. He left that company, Cyber Promotions, following lawsuits from leading Internet service providers such as Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, only to re-emerge in a spyware case that led to a s $4 million federal judgment against him in 2006.
“MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site,” Nigam said in a statement. “We remain committed to punishing those who violate the law and try to harm our members.”
Nigam told the AP that Wallace and rines created their own MySpace accounts or took over existing ones by stealing passwords through ‘phishing” scams.

Source: Bangalore Mirror