14 DAY TRIAL // Sanford Wallace, a Las Vegas native of 47, has pleaded guilty of sending over 27 million spam messages to Facebook users, as Bloomberg reports.
Mr. Wallace, which had earned the Facebook Spam King nickname, managed to gain access to over 500,000 Facebook accounts using classic phishing methods.
Using these accounts, he then went on to send over 27 million messages to friends of the hacked victims for a three-month period, between 2008 and 2009.
The messages lead to various promotional campaigns for his Cyber Promotions email marketing firm, which pocketed Mr. Wallace serious profits.
Later in 2009, Facebook sued him and got a court injunction that barred him from accessing the site, being also ordered to pay $711 million / €619 million in civil damages.
Once a criminal, always a criminal
Before spamming Facebook users, IBTimes UK reports that Mr. Wallace also distributed spyware on AOL and Concentric Network in 2006, sent unsolicited faxes before the Internet's proliferation, and also embarked on a similar spamming campaign on MySpace.
Just like Facebook, MySpace sued Mr. Wallace in 2009, and a court ordered him to pay $234 million / €203 million for breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Mr. Wallace later filed for bankruptcy.
Following the Facebook lawsuit, authorities were informed of Mr. Wallace's actions, and in 2011 caught up with him, indicting and charging him with 11 federal crimes.
After a lawsuit which dragged for four years, Mr. Wallace finally admitted his guilt and pleaded guilty to fraud and criminal contempt charges.
He now faces up to three years in jail, along with a potential fine of $250,000 / €217,000.
Wallace couldn't stay off Facebook
Since Mr. Wallace is also a human being just like the rest of us, he also couldn't resist staying off Facebook, investigators also finding he had set up a Facebook account under the name "David Sinful-Saturdays Fredericks."
This also broke his initial 2009 injunction, which was also reinforced by a similar injunction put in place by authorities in 2011.
Sanford Wallace's prison sentencing is scheduled for December 7.
