Major spammer is brought to justice

None of will probably notice a decrease in the amount of spam we receive, but it is no small thing that federal authorities have caught up with the the king of spam, reports the Associated Press.

Twenty-seven year-old Robert Alan Soloway is accused of using networks of computers to send out millions of spam e-mails.

"He's one of the top 10 spammers in the world," said Tim Cranton, a Microsoft lawyer who is senior director of the company's worldwide Internet safety program. "He's a huge problem for our customers. This is a very good day."

Soloway is being charged with a 35-count indictment of mail fraud, wire fraud, email fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

Soloway used "zombie" computers that are infected with malicious code, to send out millions of junk emails since 2003. The computers are called "zombies" because owners typically have no idea their machines have been infected.

This isn't the first time Soloway has been in court. Microsoft won a $7 million civil judgment against him in 2005 and the operator of a small Internet service provider in Oklahoma won a $10 million judgment, prosecutors said.

"Soloway has been a long-term nuisance on the Internet - both in terms of the spam he sent, and the people he duped to use his spam service," wrote organizers on Spamhaus.org, an organization that provides anti-spam protection for Internet networks and other anti-spam services.