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Facebook Files Federal Suit Against “Spam King” Sanford Wallace
February 27th, 2009
| By Justin Smith | 10 Comments » |
Three months after being awarded $873 million in a lawsuit against Atlantis Blue Capital for violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, Facebook earlier this week filed a federal complaint against “Spam King” Sanford Wallace in San Jose District Court. Las Vegas night club manager Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw are also named as defendants in the suit.
This is not the first time Wallace or Arzoomanian have been accused of malicious marketing practices on social networks. In May of 2008, MySpace won a $234 million judgment against Wallace and business partner Walter Rines for illegal spam and phishing attacks against MySpace users. In fact, Wallace has been building his “Spam King” reputation since 1997, having been charged with various federal crimes over the last decade.
Arzoomanian (or someone using his identity) seems to have appeared on the spamming scene more recently. In November 2008, a careful Facebook user blogged about a password harvesting scam he discovered by someone using domains registered to Arzoomanian’s name. Here’s how it worked:
1. Facebook users received messages that read: “did you know your profile pic is all over [spammysitehere].com”
2. When the user visited the site, the following page appeared:
3. And then:
In other words, a classic email harvesting scheme.
This is exactly the type of malicious attack that is pursuable under CAN-SPAM, and it appears Facebook is doing just that against Wallace and Arzoomanian.
Facebook has not responded to our request for comment about the suit.
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February 27th, 2009 at 11:45 am
[...] Go here to see the original: Facebook Files Federal Suit Against “Spam King” Sanford Wallace [...]
February 27th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Here’s how it works. Anon spammer registers a bunch of domains using the name “Sanford Wallace” and some people you know he does business with in the nightclub business in Vegas (5 minutes of research on the net to obtain names). Then big corp / gov’t uses THAT unauthenticated information to go after the big name spammer who conveniently provides press coverage whenever his name is mentioned. Then argue a case without a defendent, obtain a default judgment and act like you won a lawsuit based on the merits of the case. Repeat step for years.
February 27th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
[...] Now he is back in the news getting sued by MySpace rival Facebook. Inside Facebook reports: [...]
February 28th, 2009 at 8:00 am
[...] The rest is here: Facebook Files Federal Suit Against “Spam King” Sanford Wallace [...]
March 1st, 2009 at 7:04 am
[...] Wallace, aka the “Spam King”, is being sued by Facebook for allegedly violating the Can-Spam act of 2003. You may remember that MySpace won a $234 million [...]
March 1st, 2009 at 10:59 pm
[...] Facebook подал в суд на короля спама [...]
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
[...] of the lawsuit was first reported Friday by Inside Facebook, a Web site for Facebook [...]
March 4th, 2009 at 3:44 am
[...] auf Inside Facebook Ähnliche [...]
April 29th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
[...] worm last year), though it can never prevent phishing attacks completely. In the past, Facebook has filed suit against large spammers like “Spam King” Sanford Wallace, so it’s possible that Facebook might press charges against the perpetrators of this attack [...]
June 12th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
[...] this year, we first covered the news that Facebook had filed a federal lawsuit against famed “Spam King” Sanford Wallace, Adam Arzoomanian, and Scott Shaw for crimes under the CAN-SPAM Act, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, [...]