Sanford Wallace, dubbed Facebook "Spam King" for sending more than 27 million spam messages and compromising 500,000 Facebook accounts, was sentenced on Tuesday, June 14, to 30 months in jail.
According to PCMag, the Department of Justice announced that the Las Vegas man was sentenced to a 2.5-year prison term after he has admitted to sending tens of millions of spam messages on Facebook. The "Spam King" will begin serving his sentence in September. Sanford Wallace was also ordered to pay $310,628.55 in restitution and to follow a five-year period of supervised release after serving his prison term.
In August 2015, the "Spam King" pleaded guilty to one count of criminal contempt and one count of fraud related to his Facebook spamming activities. Wallace admitted in his plea agreement that he compromised from November 2008 through March 2009 around 500,000 Facebook accounts and used them to send more than 27 million spam messages.
The "Spam King" set up a fictitious Facebook account using the name of "David Frederix." He also created an automated process to access other people's accounts and retrieve a list of their friends. A message was then sent to each one on the list, tricking them to visit a website, enter their personal information, then being redirected to an affiliate site.
In 2008 and 2009, Wallace also accessed Facebook's own computer network three different times in order to send out hundreds of thousands of spam messages. Wallace and two other spammers were sued by Facebook in 2009. The social media network won $711 million in damages.
The case was referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office for possible criminal charges. After the 2011 indictment, Wallace turned himself in to the FBI that same year.
According to the Verge, Wallace's spamming career did not begin with Facebook spam messages. In the '90s, Wallace used to send junk fax messages. Later on, in 2007 and 2009, respectively, he faced civil suits from both Facebook and Myspace.
Wallace was fined nearly $1 billion in fines from the two companies. However, he was not able to pay. With his recent sentence, this is the first time when Wallace has been convicted of a crime.
