Sanford Wallace, the self-proclaimed “spam king”, is out on bail after posting a US $100,000 bond on charges that he sent more than 27 million spam messages to Facebook users.

Sanford was indicted on July 6 on six counts of electronic mail fraud, three counts of intentional damage to a protected computer and two counts of criminal contempt.

The indictment filed in San Jose federal court said Wallace compromised about 500,000 Facebook accounts between November 2008 and March 2009 by sending massive amounts of spam through the company’s servers on three separate occasions.

read more

In a ruling that’s more about a point of principle than money, a California judge has ordered “Spam King” Sanford Wallace to pay Facebook $711m in damages for the reams of spam messages sent via the service.

What made these messages particularly insidious is that they were sent from hacked accounts, attaching a superficial level of trust because they appeared to come from friends.

Wallace and his associates were also banned from accessing Facebook, though given how devious spammers and hackers can be, this would seem to be a difficult ruling to enforce. read more