Spammer Arrested in Seattle
One of the country’s most notorious spammers was arrested Wednesday in Seattle, according to reports.
Robert A. Soloway was reportedly scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon on 35 counts of mail and wire fraud, money laundering and fraud connected with e-mail.
Soloway is accused of defrauding people who paid him to send bulk e-mail on their behalf and people who bought e-mail software from him.
For $495, customers could have Soloway send e-mails to 20 million addresses for 15 days or sell them 80,000 e-mail addresses, the Seattle Times reported. However, according to an indictment handed down last week, the software sometimes didn’t work and Soloway’s e-mails were sent with false headers, an illegal practice aimed at masking an e-mail’s origins.
According to spam blacklist maintainer Spamhaus, Soloway is a “long-term spammer and harvested list seller.” Spamhaus also claims that Soloway “commits hundreds of felony violations of U.S. computer crime laws daily.”
Microsoft in 2005 won a judgment against Soloway for allegedly sending e-mails that appeared to have come from MSN and Hotmail addresses.
Also in 2005, Oklahoma businessman and anti-spam activist Robert Braver won a $10 million default judgment against Soloway.
Soloway has been frequently cited as one of the top 10 spammers in the world.
