Of all the men who have been dubbed “Spam King” by the media and law enforcement, surely the most deserving of the title is Sanford Wallace.
He has been facing spamming accusations on and off since the mid-nineties.
And now it’s Facebook’s turn.
The social networking site filed suit last week against Wallace claiming that beginning in November Wallace, Las Vegas nightclub owner Adam Arzoomanian, Scott Shaw and 25 unnamed “Does” tricked Facebook users into handing over their login information so Wallace and his alleged accomplices could gain access to the duped Facebook users’ accounts and spam their friends.
Filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, CA, the complaint accuses the 28 individuals of violating California computer fraud law and the federal Can-Spam Act. It seeks unspecified damages, attorney fees and a permanent injunction blocking Wallace and his alleged accomplices from using Facebook.
Facebook got a preliminary injunction yesterday.
The company contends the scheme is particularly harmful to its brand because while traditional spam is easily identified and ignored, Wallace and his accomplices’ alleged messages appeared to be personal messages from friends.
“As a result, Facebook is suffering significant harm to its reputation and goodwill,” said the complaint. Moreover, the firm alleges: “Facebook’s economic damages continue to mount as Facebook is forced to implement new methods and techniques in an effort to identify and block [the] defendants’ ever-changing tactics.”
Wallace first gained international notoriety in 1997 as a self-proclaimed spammer and owner of Cyber Promotions, a Philadelphia firm that by some estimates was responsible for up to a third of all spam.
In 1998, lawyer Pete Wellborn obtained a $2 million judgment against Wallace on behalf of Earthlink and got Cyber Promotions shut down.
Soon after, Wallace publically renounced his spamming past and struck a consulting deal with Wellborn for $200 an hour in some anti-spam cases the well-known anti-spam attorney was pursuing at the time.
Wellborn said in an e-mail exchange with this newsletter yesterday that if Wallace is spamming again, it would be a shame.
“He is a very bright guy and, in his dealings with me (I stress that phrase—‘in his dealings with me’—the only context of which I have first-hand knowledge), I found him to be a man of his word,” Wellborn wrote. “If, indeed, he is straying down illegal or improper paths, it is an enormous waste of potential and talent.”
In 2006, a federal judge in New Hampshire ordered Wallace to pay more than $4 million for distributing spyware.
Last year, a federal court in Los Angeles ordered Wallace and another individual to pay MySpace $230 million for sending members unsolicited messages that appeared to have come from their friends.
