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Small Fine A Dutch Treat For Spammer
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-02-05
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For sending out some 9 billion junk emails through the use of zombied computers, the Dutch telecom regulator Opta fined the spammer known as Mr. X the paltry sum of $97,500 for his actions.
 | | Small Fine A Dutch Treat For Spammer |  |
In Euros, the fine worked out to €75,000 for Mr. X. There's a certain comedy to this, especially a couple of years after a German tribunal found Sasser worm creator Sven Jaschan worthy of a mere suspended sentence.
A VNUnet discussion of the sentencing, along with jailings handed down to a couple of other Dutch criminals for taking over "tens of thousands" of computers, noted how the spammer earned €52,000 at least in fourteen months.
Unless Mr. X made more than the €52,000, he ends up with a net loss of €23,000. Let's hope the authorities aren't just taking Mr. X's word for how much he made from his massive spamming campaign.
This may be news to the Dutch, but criminals have been known to lie. If Mr. X pulls out his wallet and pays the fine in cash while whistling happy tunes, chances are he made more than what the authorities discovered.
The report said Mr. X rented ten servers stuffed with millions of email addresses from Managed.com. He used several hundred zombied machines located in the United States to send out his spam. The US has been the top spam relaying nation for some time, thanks to people who for whatever reason do not clean up their systems.
Contrast the minuscule fine Mr. X received to the one levied against a Florida spammer who was sued by an ISP in Iowa. The $11.2 billion fine against James McCalla for dumping some 280 million messages into the tubes at CIS Internet Services also carried a prohibition from going online for three years.
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Tags: Dutch, Spammer
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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