Sanford Wallace, known as Spam King , surrendered to U.S. authorities after being accused of developing a system that has shipped more than 27 million spam messages through Facebook s servers.
Las Vegas man surrendered to FBI agents and faces 11 counts of fraud, malicious damage to a protected computer and contempt for violating previous orders to stay away from Facebook and MySpace, according to prosecutors California at the end of the fifth Tuesday (4).
Wallace, 43, developed a program to avoid spam filters and Facebook messages sent urging users to visit a website, purportedly from a friend, according to the indictment unsealed Thursday.
Instead, unsuspecting users to provide their email address and password, then redirects to an affiliate site that gave Wallace a significant revenue traffic, according to the indictment.
Wallace's program collected information, including friends lists and messages are sent spam to them.
Accounts of around 500,000 Facebook users have been committed between November 2008 and March 2009, sending more than 27 million messages, federal prosecutors said.
"We're very pleased Judge Jeremy Fogel agreed that there were grounds for criminal contempt and that the U.S. Attorney's office should investigate Wallace," Facebook said in an e-mail statement. "Wallace filed for bankruptcy, which is not unexpected and only delays our judgment temporarily. We will continue to pursue the judgment and will be reviewing his filing very closely."
The order should serve as a strong deterrent against spammers, Facebook said. "Fogel's ruling demonstrates that judges will enforce restraining orders and spammers who violate them face criminal prosecution" the statement said.
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