In your Face, spam artist!
Facbook spam merchant, Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, has been ordered by a U.S. District Judge to cough up a whopping $711 million in damages to the social not-working site, for a phishing scam which is said to have affected tens of thousands of Facebook accounts.
Wallace and two accomplices reeled in their unsuspecting victims using phishing emails, after which the nefarious three inundated their quarries with spam for porn and gambling sites. As if that wasn't bad enough, Wallace was also able to gain access to his preys' friend lists too.
Facebook was seeking over a billion dollars in damages for Wallaces purported 14,214,753 violations of the CAN-SPAM Act, but San Jose District Judge Jeremy Fogel reckoned $710,737,650 was a fair poke at justice.
Sam O'Rourke, Facebook's legal counsel said in a statement that while the firm didn't expect to receive the vast majority of the award, "we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals."
This is Facebook's second major anti spam victory to date. Last year the site won $873 million in damages from Canadian spammer, Adam Guerbuez, in what is still the largest Can-Spam judgment in history. Wallace's judgment comes a pretty decent second though. Just a shame none of the victims get to share in the compensation spoils.
