In 2008 and 2009, Sanford “Spam King” Wallace of Las Vegas, Nev., took a gamble on a scheme: illegally access Facebook’s computer network, gain and store account information, send out millions of spam messages to the accounts’ friends and earn money once those users visited the intended websites. Last month, he finally lost.
Previously, Wallace faced and lost civil suits involving both MySpace and Facebook, totaling close to $1 billion in outstanding default judgments according to Ars Technica. He also willfully disobeyed U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel’s order to neither access or attempt to access Facebook’s computer network nor create or maintain a Facebook account.
Following an FBI investigation, Wallace was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2011 and charged with multiple counts of fraud and related activity in connection with electronic mail. He was also charged with three counts of intentional damage to a protected computer for accessing Facebook’s computer network and two counts of criminal contempt for disobeying Judge Fogel’s order.
Wallace accepted a plea deal from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $310,000 in restitution. Wallace will begin serving his sentence on Sept 7, 2016. After his release, he will also serve a five-year period of supervised release. Game over.
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