Spam arrest

The arrest of a notorious internet spammer in the United States last week has highlighted important shifts in how law enforcement is going after the people who dump unwanted e-mail into inboxes worldwide. Karlin Lillingtonreports.

Spam experts say the arraignment of Robert Soloway (27), known for his expensive tastes in imported cars and Seattle waterfront apartments, also shows the difficulty in bringing such people to book. They warn internet users that they shouldn't expect any decline in the flow of spam, either - at least not yet.

Soloway is just one figure - not even one of the most prominent - among the international spam kings, shady figures who use "botnets" of hijacked computers to blast out spam, dirtying up mailboxes and infecting computers with malicious code.

Soloway is believed to have e-mailed billions of spam messages. Investigators say more than 200 million spam e-mails sent by him him were gathered on just two sets of servers over a couple of months. Yet he is one of only a few spammers ever to be charged with committing a crime.

When the charges came this week, though, they were significant. Soloway was indicted by a federal jury on 35 charges: 10 counts of mail fraud, five counts of wire fraud, two counts of e-mail fraud, five counts of aggravated identity theft and 13 counts of money-laundering.

"This guy is not one of the biggest ones if you look at it in volume terms, but he never did much to hide his identity or his company name," says Vincent Hanna, investigator with international anti-spam organisation Spamhaus.

"If you look at it from a law-enforcement perspective, it was humiliating that he could go on for so long under the nose of law enforcement saying, 'ha ha, you can't catch me'. These people who do things online think they are untouchable."

That's because to date, they mostly have been.

"The prosecution of spammers is very difficult," admits Hanna. They often are adept at hiding their identity; they run their messages through networks of computers scattered over the world, they hide the money they make and many base themselves in countries like Russia, that have been slow to take any action against large spam gangs.

Software giant Microsoft, which won a previous judgment against Soloway, was pleased with the news of the arrest. "Microsoft is very excited by the arrest of Mr Soloway because he is part of a group of people that are defiant of the law and who are more hardcore in their practices," says Aaron Kornbloom, senior lawyer for Microsoft in the US.

As Kornbloom puts it, "Microsoft know Mr Soloway well."

In 2005, the company won a $7.8 million (€5.8 million) civil suit against him for sending millions of spam messages through its Hotmail webmail service.

An Oklahoma-based internet service provider also won a $10 million (€7.4 million) suit against him. Soloway however has never paid a penny to either because it has been impossible to locate his assets, says Kornbloom.

He may now face more than 65 years in prison, thanks to stronger laws, greater co-operation between law-enforcement branches and improved international co- operation, all elements that should enable more effective action against spammers.

In particular, Hanna and Kornbloom cite the 2004 Can-spam law in the US, used to go after Soloway, which offers law enforcement new tools and also requires the Federal Trade Commission to enforce it.

The US Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service were among the organisations that co-operated to bring about Soloway's arrest.

Rightly so, according to Hanna, because while many think of spam as a harmless annoyance, it costs billions to manage annually and is often associated with more nefarious activity, including identity theft, credit card fraud and the hijacking of computers with malicious codes so that even more spam can be launched.

Millions of personal computers at home and work are believed to be used for sending spam in this way, unbeknownst to their owners. Kornbloom says about 80 per cent of all e-mail traffic is estimated to be spam and most spam is believed to be sent through hijacked computers.

Both Hanna and Kornbloom feel the arraignment and the prospect of a long jail term are significant. "This arrest will send an important deterrent message to those sending illegal messages," says Kornbloom.

Hanna says more international co-operation, stronger international laws and faster action against spammers, who typically move their operations around to make them hard to trace, would all help curtail spamming activity.

In the meantime, he is rejoicing at the capture of Soloway, who has appeared on Spamhaus's top 10 spammers list in the past and remains on their top 135.

"It's a very good start. We're very glad law enforcement takes things seriously," says Hanna. "The only way is up."