Incident Response, TDR, Threat Management

‘Spam King’ pleads guilty to sending more than 27M Facebook messages

A Las Vegas man pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and criminal contempt in a California District Court Monday for "misusing electronic mail and related activity" as part of a massive Facebook spam campaign, according to a release.

Sanford Wallace, a.k.a. "Spam King," admitted to compromising approximately 500,000 Facebook accounts to send more than 27 million spam messages, the release said. He also copped to violating a court order stemming from a 2009 lawsuit that prohibited him from accessing Facebook's computer network and ordered him to pay the company $711 million.

Between November 2008 and March 2009, Wallace fraudulently obtained Facebook users' login credentials "to gain access to their accounts and send them unsolicited commercial electronic messages,” the release said.

Wallace is scheduled for sentencing on Dec. 7 and faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

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