Court Denies The So-called Spam King’s Bail

Robert Soloway, the notorious "Spam King", was arrested on May 30, 2007 with charges of committing 35 instances of cyber crime. The most significant accusation on him was that he defrauded people by distributing tens of millions of spam emails all over the world. The court denied him bail on June 13, 2007, as published by Chron on June 13, 2007.

U.S. Magistrate Judge James P. Donohue ordered jail detention for Soloway, 27, from Seattle until his appearance for trial on August 6, 2007. Moreover, he has least connection with Washington State and his family lives in Sweden, Donohue said.

Soloway also faces accusation of playing false with customers who gave him money to spam out large volumes of commercial e-mails or those who purchased his software for sending spam on their own. There is also accusation on Soloway that he used 'botnets', networks of compromised computers, to hide the origin of his spam emails, and issued counterfeit return addresses of legitimate people and businesses.

U.S. prosecutors said that during November 2003 to May 2007, Soloway spammed huge volumes of unwanted e-mails to advertise websites where his company, Newport Internet Marketing traded goods and services. Soloway regularly changed the Internet address of his website to escape detection. In 2006, he even started registering those addresses through Chinese ISPs to hide his identity.

Judge Donohue said since such types of cyber crimes defied all geographical boundaries, it was not quite difficult to continue with them in Sweden just the same as in the U.S, as per the news published by Tech.Blorge on June 13, 2007.

In a court filing, Soloway's attorney Richard Troberman wrote that the government's claim based on clues that Soloway would run away awfully lacked facts. He said Soloway had only gone abroad with his parents, as reported by Chron on June 13, 2007.

In 2005, Microsoft sued Soloway for delivering e-mails under fake header titles dressing them as formal e-mails from MSN addresses. The court had instructed him to restitute $7m in losses. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma, Soloway threatened to ruin his customers' credit for trying to get refunds.

Related article: Court Acquits Student From Generating Fake Boarding Passes

» SPAMfighter News - 6/29/2007