The FBI called him the 'Godfather of Spam'; his co-accused, Scott Bradley, called him 'Dad'; the judge addressed him as Alan M. Ralsky as he sentenced him to 51 months in prison for fraud, money-laundering and spamming.
Alan Ralsky, Scott Bradley and two co-conspirators got between 32 and 51 months in prison for perpetrating the massive 'pump and dump' spam frauds that netted them millions of dollars between 2004 and 2006.
The scams are still around today - and they fall firmly in the 'if it looks too good to be true - then it is' camp. The motley crew setup companies with tortuously hidden ownerships between the US and Hong Kong, and then floated them. The next step was to send out millions and millions of spam emails extolling the virtues of these companies and the fact that their stock was 'on the up'. Enough of the unsuspecting recipients (obviously not proFilter users!) fell for it in order to raise demand for the stock, driving up the price; at which point the Ralsky crew sold their stocks before the truth came out and the price collapsed again.
The spammers could make 6% on their money in a couple of days, with the price being paid by the targets of their spam.
Four years for money-laundering, wire and mail fraud, breaching the CAN-SPAM act, will hopefully send a message to spammers. It's another case of old-crimes & new-technology, but the judge was clear that they wil come down heavily on using the Internet for crime. We'll see what difference it makes.
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Prolateral Consulting is in business to put your organisation back in control of your own Information Technology, specialising in information and messaging security, computer forensic services, and disaster recovery planing.
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