Facebook goes after three more spammers in court

Facebook has filed three additional lawsuits against alleged spammers, the company announced Wednesday.

Three separate complaints, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., contend that Steven Richter, Jason Swan and Max Bounty violated federal anti-spam laws when they "used Facebook to offer enticing, but nonexistent products and services," to users, the social networking website said in a blog post.

Facebook lawyers contend that the defendants forced users to "spam their friends, sign up for automatic mobile phone subscription services or provide other information" to qualify for offers that were bogus anyway.

"We will press on with enforcement and collection efforts against spammers and fraudsters, and we're committed to applying continuous legal pressure to send a strong message to spammers that they're not welcome on Facebook," the blog post said. "We have other actions pending, and there will be more to come."

Facebook is fresh off winning an $873 million judgment against a Canadian man, Adam Guerbuez. A court in Quebec, earlier this month, upheld the fine, despite Guerbuez publicly stating that he has no plans to pay the fine.

And last year, Facebook won $711 million in damages for being victimized by a prolific spammer Sanford Wallace.

[An earlier version of this story was corrected Wednesday, Oct. 20 at 5:16 p.m EST. The earlier story reported Steven Richter as the father of Scott Richter, principal of Media Breakaway. The two are unrelated. We regret the error.]