List of spammers
Encyclopedia
This is a list of individuals and organizations noteworthy for engaging in bulk electronic spamming, either on their own behalf or on behalf of others. It is not a list of all spammers, only those whose actions have attracted substantial independent attention.
- Shane AtkinsonShane AtkinsonShane Atkinson, of Christchurch, New Zealand was a major spammer whose details were leaked on to the Internet soon after an article was written about him in the New Zealand Herald...
, who was named in an interview by the New Zealand Herald as the man behind an operation sending out 100 million emails per day in 2003, who claimed (and appeared) to honor unsubscribe requests, and who claimed to be giving up spamming shortly after the interview. His brother Lance was ordered to pay $2 million to U.S. authorities. - Serdar ArgicSerdar ArgicSerdar Argic was the alias used in one of the first automated newsgroup spam incidents on Usenet, with the objective of refuting the Armenian Genocide.-Usenet posts:...
(aka Zumabot), who disrupted Usenet by posting up to 100 messages per day on different newsgroups in an attempt to deny the Armenian GenocideArmenian GenocideThe Armenian Genocide—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...
. - Canter & SiegelCanter & Siegel-External links:* Ben Delisle, - 1994 Usenet post giving background on Canter and Siegel]* Ray Everett-Church, , Wired magazine, April 13, 1999* Sharael Feist, , CNET News, March 26, 2002* John M. Moran, , Hartford Courant, June 30, 2002...
, a husband and wife who famously posted one of the first commercial Usenet spam advertisements to thousands of newsgroups and were defiant in the face of thousands of email flames, having supposedly generated over $100,000 in revenue from the ad. - Richard ColbertRichard ColbertRichard Colbert was a prolific spammer based in Miami, Florida, in an area known as "Spam Beach".He would obtain clients' email addresses by searching AOL member profiles for any including phrases such as "business opportunity" or "multilevel marketing", believing them to be small-time salesmen...
, a retired spammer (as of 2003) who scoured AOL for business contacts, offering spam as his service, claims to have honored "unsubscribe" requests, and gave an interview to The New York Times. - David D'Amato, a former assistant high school principal who was fined $5,000 and spent a year in prison after being convicted in 2001 for online crimes including email bombs targeted at individuals and institutions.
- Eddie Davidson, a convicted spammer who died along with his wife and daughter in 2008 in a murder-suicide.
- Peter Francis-MacraePeter Francis-MacraePeter "Weaselboy" Francis-Macrae is an English spammer found guilty of two counts of fraudulent trading, one of concealing criminal property, two of making threats to kill, one charge of threatening to destroy or damage property and one count of blackmail...
, convicted of fraudulent trading, blackmail, and violent threats after sending thousands of businesses solicitations to purchase .eu.eu.eu is the country code top-level domain for the European Union . Launched 7 December 2005, the domain is available for organisations in and residents of EU member states. The TLD is administered by EURid, a consortium consisting of the national ccTLD registry operators of Belgium, Sweden, Italy...
internet domains he did not own. - Davis Wolfgang HawkeDavis Wolfgang HawkeDavis Wolfgang Hawke is a spammer who was sued by AOL in 2004 under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Previously, in 1999 he started two neo-Nazi groups to make the "final solution a reality." He has been dubbed by the press as the "spam Nazi."-Biography:...
, who lost a $12.8 million judgment against AOL in 2004 after using spam to promote a neo-Nazi agenda. - Jumpstart Technologies, an incubator of prominent social network Hi5Hi5 (website)hi5 is a social networking website based in San Francisco, California. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi. By 2008, comScore reported that hi5 had become the third most popular social networking site in terms of monthly unique visitors....
and the first entity to pay a settlement as great as $900,000 for violating the CAN-SPAM actCAN-SPAM Act of 2003The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 , signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 16, 2003, establishes the United States' first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail and requires the Federal Trade Commission to enforce its provisions...
, later spun off into social networking site Tagged which subsequently paid upwards of $1.5 million in various fines and legal settlements involving government entities as well as private individuals, and was referred to by Time magazine as "the world's most annoying website". - Vardan KushnirVardan KushnirVardan Vardanovich Kushnir was a notorious spammer of Armenian-Jewish descent who ran the American Language Center and who is believed to have spammed the entire population of Russian-language Internet users with ads for his language courses...
, a famous Russian spammer who was murdered in 2005 for reasons possibly unrelated to his spamming activities - Kevin LipsitzKevin Lipsitz"Krazy" Kevin Lipsitz is a competitive eater from Staten Island, New York, and is affiliated with IFOCE, the International Federation of Competitive Eating. Known for his bear hat and charismatic eating style, Lipsitz has competed in events across the country, and appeared on the Gutbusters...
, who was prosecuted in NY for spamming newsgroups with a magazine scam in 1997 - Wayne MansfieldWayne MansfieldWayne Mansfield, of Perth, Australia, was the head of direct marketing business T3 Direct Marketing, operating under a series of two-dollar companies, and in 2005 became the first Australian to be prosecuted for email spamming....
in 2005 became the first Australian to be prosecuted for email spamming. - Oleg NikolaenkoOleg NikolaenkoOleg Yegorovich Nikolaenko is a Russian national who has been charged in a U.S. federal court with violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Federal investigators believe his activities may have been responsible for as much as one third of the world's electronic spam. Nikolaenko is being held without...
, arrested by the Federal Bureau of InvestigationFederal Bureau of InvestigationThe Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
in November 2010 as the "King of Spam". - Alan RalskyAlan RalskyAlan Ralsky is a convicted American fraudster, best known for his activities as a spammer.-Spamming:According to experts in the field, Ralsky is one of the most prolific sources of junk e-mail worldwide. Unlike most spammers, he has provided interviews to various newspapers, although he claimed to...
, Scott Bradley, John Bown, William Neil, and James Fite, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to use spam emails to pump and dumpPump and dump"Pump and dump" is a form of microcap stock fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price....
thinly traded stocks, in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act. The group faced years of prison time and millions of dollars in penalties under the terms of their plea agreements. - Dave Rhodes, the (possibly apocryphal) name attached to a famous chain letter titled "MAKE MONEY FAST" that originated in the late 1980s.
- Scott RichterScott RichterScott Richter is the CEO of Media Breakaway, formerly known as OptInRealBig.com LLC. Other related companies are Dynamic Dolphin and affiliate.com....
, who paid $7 million to Microsoft in 2006 in a settlement arising out of a lawsuit alleging illegal spam activities. - Russian Business NetworkRussian Business NetworkThe Russian Business Network is a multi-faceted cybercrime organization, specializing in and in some cases monopolizing personal identity theft for resale...
- Christopher "Rizler" SmithChristopher William SmithChristopher William Smith was a prolific e-mail spammer, and sold drugs online from his illegal Xpress Pharmacy Direct in Burnsville, Minnesota, United States...
, who was forced to pay $5.5 million to America Online for spam activity in 2003 and is currently serving a 30 year prison sentence for charges not related to spam. - Robert Alan Soloway, who lost a $7 million civil judgment against Microsoft and was forced to pay $10 million to a small ISP in Oklahoma.
- Gary Thuerk, the "Father of Spam" who sent out the first unsolicited email blast to 600 ARPANet members, in 1978.
- Sanford WallaceSanford WallaceSanford "Spamford" Wallace came to notoriety in 1997, promoting himself as the original Spam King. Wallace's prolific spamming has resulted in encounters with the United States government, anti-spam activists, and large corporations such as Facebook and MySpace...
, who was fined $4 million under the CAN-SPAM Act in 2006, lost a $230 million dollar judgment to MySpace in May 2008, and was ordered to pay $711 million in damages to Facebook in 2009 for accessing users' accounts without their permission and sending phony posts and messages.