Spammer pleads guilty to charges

I blogged a couple of weeks ago that accused spammer Robert Soloway's trial was beginning but that I didn't think it was likely that much would come of it.  Well, I think I have been proven wrong.  According to IDG, Soloway plead guilty and now faces a possible 26-year jail sentence.

The notorious spammer authorities dubbed "the King of Spam" is facing a possible 26-year jail sentence after pleading guilty in Seattle on Friday to charges of fraud and tax evasion.

Robert Soloway, 28, had already been found guilty of spam charges in several civil cases -- Microsoft won a US$7.8 million judgment against him in 2005 -- but had avoided paying fines in those cases. The criminal charges to which he pleaded guilty on Friday followed his arrest in 2007 by the U.S. Justice Department.

...

In an interview last month, Microsoft Senior Attorney Aaron Kornblum said he thought the prosecution would make other spammers think twice. "There have not been a large number of criminal CAN-SPAM prosecutions in the U.S.," he said. "This is significant."

Soloway is set to be sentenced on June 20. The prosecution had been seeking $700,000 in damages when Soloway was first charged nearly a year ago.

Indeed, it is significant that criminal charges under the CAN-SPAM act have been laid and subsequently pursued.  However, my bet is that he's going to get the book thrown at him for the charges of fraud (stock pump-and-dump) and tax evasion.  I don't think that this will impact the amount of spam we're all seeing in our inboxes but l like to think that in this case, the spammer is getting what he deserves.