14 DAY TRIAL // Leonid "Leo" Kuvayev, one of the world's most notorious spammers appeared in a Moscow court this week to face charges of pedophilia and rape.
Kuvayev, who has dual Russian-American citizenship, fled the United States in 2005 after the Massachusetts Attorney General filed a criminal lawsuit against his company for violations under the CAN-SPAM Act. That legal action eventually resulted in a default judgement of 37.5 million dollars,
Kuvayev, known online as BadCaw, was once the number two on Spamhaus.org's Top 10 worst spammers list and has been involved in all types of spam, from pharma to replica watches and adult content.
He was arrested by Russian authorities in September 2009 on suspicions of child molestation at a time when he was already under surveillance for his cyber criminal activities.
Russian prosecutors have identified sixty separate incidents of child abuse, his victims being girls from local orphanages and boarding schools aged thirteen to eighteen.
Some of them suffer from mental disabilities and others have gotten involved in prostitution since then. So far, ten victims have come forth and agreed to testify against Kuvayev.
Authorities believe Kuvayev took many of the girls back to his office, where they found a large bed, a sauna, a jacuzzi and various sex toys. They also found incriminating footage.
Russian news site KM.ru reports [Google translation] that Kuvayev partially admitted the allegations and tried to defend his actions in front of investigators by claiming the girls consented to everything.
Kuvayev faces 20 years in prison for each of the counts under six articles of the Russian criminal code. The spammer became a target for Russian authorities after he began operating unlicensed pharmacies, a profitable, but illegal, type of business that fuels a large percentage of email spam today.