Facebook ‘spam king’ pleads guilty after sending over 27m messages

A man dubbed as the Facebook spam king has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and criminal contempt, having sent over 27 million commercially themed spam messages to Facebook users and then illegally accessing 500,000 of the accounts. The incidents took place between 2008 and 2009.

The man behind the scheme broke in to Facebook accounts by fraudulently claiming their details and then used those accounts to send out more spam messages. He was one of the worst, according to courts the spam king would send around 300,000 unofficial marketing messages out on an average month. Aside from that, a court order to not access Facebook's network was also violated.

While a guilty plea was made, sentencing has not been carried out just yet. The man could face up to three years in prison and be slapped with a $250,000 fine. The sentencing will take place on the 7th of December, assuming there are no delays.

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KitGuru Says: There are plenty of fraudulent spam accounts across different social networks. I would be interested to learn how much money this guy managed to make through his mass phishing scam, after all, it does sound a bit excessive with 27 million spam messages sent out in just one year, with 500,000 real accounts taken over to send them.

Via: Bloomberg

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