INTERNET LAW - Spam King Robert Soloway Arrested for Sending Billions of Illegal Messages a Day

On May 30, 2007 Robert Alan Soloway, voted one of the ten biggest spam artists in the world, was arrested in Seattle, a week after being indicted by a grand jury in Washington, and charged with fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and breaking Federal anti-spam legislation. Soloway has been a colossal Internet pest for years, sending giant amounts of spam, filling mailboxes and mail servers to overflowing with unsolicited and unwanted junk email. Criminally, he fraudulently marketed spam services as legitimate 'opt-in' services, fooling innocent users and then offering no customer support or refunds. Soloway used hijacked computers and open proxies,and therefore repeatedly violated the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act of 1984 and the CAN-SPAM law of 2003. 

 
On May 30, 2007 Robert Alan Soloway, voted one of the ten biggest spam artists in the world, was arrested in Seattle, a week after being indicted by a grand jury in Washington, and charged with fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and breaking Federal anti-spam legislation. Soloway's arrest followed a large joint investigation by the Washington State Attorney General's Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Internal Revenue Service Department of

Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI), and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).
Soloway has been a colossal Internet pest for years, sending giant amounts of spam, filling mailboxes and mail servers to overflowing with unsolicited and unwanted junk email. Criminally, he fraudulently marketed spam services as legitimate 'opt-in' services, fooling innocent users and then offering no customer support or refunds. Soloway used hijacked computers and open proxies,and therefore repeatedly violated the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act of 1984 and the CAN-SPAM law of 2003.

Who is Robert Alan Soloway?
Robert Alan Soloway, 27 of Seattle Washington, worked his way to becoming one of the most hated figures on the Internet. He alone may be responible for billlions of spam messages sent out every day, till his arrest. He is also founder of the so-called anti-spam "Strategic Partnership Against Microsoft Illegal Spam", or SPAMIS, but ironically may be the Internet's biggest spammer through his company, Newport Internet Marketing. He went after Microsoft when they began fighting his activities as a serial spammer.

What is the Case Against Soloway?
Soloway appeared before the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington unshaven, wearing loafers with no socks, to hear Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma announce that if he's convicted of all charges, including fraud, money laundering and identity theft listed in the indictment, he could spend 65 years behind bars. "We know that Robert Soloway is one of the most prolific spammers in the world," claimed Warma before the case opened. "He has condemned them (his victims) to perpetual spam hell" unless they escape by canceling their domain names or changing their Internet protocol addresses.

Robert Alan Soloway's arrest came a week after a federal grand jury returned "a 35-count indictment charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. He's accused of using networks of compromised computers to send out millions upon millions of junk e-mails since 2003."
Soloway employed networks of non-spec computers called "botnets" to shoot oceans of unsolicited bulk e-mails advertising his Internet marketing company for promotions. Those who clicked on a link in the e-mail were sent to his Web site, where he offered two types of services. In one, he claimed he would send as many as 20 million e-mail advertisements in two weeks for $495, according to the indictment.

U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan claims this is the first case in the US where federal prosecutors used identity theft statutes to nail a spammer for stealing someone else's Internet domain name. This alone could net Soloway an extra two years on his sentence if convicted. A long prison stretch may be in the cards, depending what sentencing guideline is used.

The grand jury indictment claims Soloway ran Newport Internet Marketing Corp., which sold a "broadcast e-mail" software product and "broadcast e-mail" services that is clearly outlawed by the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2004, and makes illegal transmission of a large amount of commercial e-mail messages added to set criminal additions, like using relay computers to send the message, meant to hide the origin or using fictitious header information in the e-mail. Soloway did all these things.

Soloway's name and company had been turned in to the Northwest Computer Crimes Taskforce, housed by the FBI and which includes an IRS Criminal Investigation Division and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. This triggered an investigation after the Federal Trade Commission and the state Attorney General's Office received hundreds of complaints that Soloway regarding false and fraudulent claims regarding his products and services. The victims were denied refunds, and were upset about being blamed for sending illegal spam as a result of mistakenly hiring Soloway's company, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Warma.

Soloway has already been sued successfully by Microsoft Corporation and Robert Braver, owner of an Oklahoma-based Internet company, for violations of the U.S. CAN-SPAM law and various state anti-spam laws, and they received millions of dollars in damages. Soloway never paid, claiming he lived off proceeds of a family trust and was therefore, legally, "judgement-proof." When sued by Braver in September 2005 in Oklahoma City, Soloway fired his lawyers and then skipped out on the case. U.S. District Judge Ralph G. Thompson then issued a permanent injunction, forbidding him to continue sending spam. Needless to say, Soloway ignored this and continued his reign as Spam King.

How Did Soloway Work his Spam?
Soloway's online empire was commandeered from his trendy, Seattle Harbor Steps apartment on the waterfront, according to investigators. One expert estimated that the man agents named the "Spam King" when they apprehended him sent billions, or perhaps even tens of billions, of e-mails a day. On just two servers groups, during a several month stretch, the Feds found in excess of 200 million spam messages that originated with Robert Soloway.

To hide the origin and ownership of Web site, Feds claim Soloway constantly changed the address to different domains, even employing Chinese Internet Service providers last year. The spammed messages that he used to advertise his corporate Web sites contained false header information (email message lines and top of Internet page banners) and then were systematically forwarded using networks of slave computers called "botnets."

Soloway's work in the virtual world caused real-life chaos, heartache, loss and rage to others. Since he could not use his own information, but needed to have someone's information attached to his sent messages, his spam had these phony headers with the real life e-mail addresses or domain names of innocent people or organizations, whom were then fingered for Soloway's spam and "blacklisted" from future contacts with the recipient. Said John Reid, a volunteer with The Spamhaus Project, an anti-spam group, "The amount of damage he does to the Internet -- the fraud thing to innocent people who think they're hiring some Internet person -- is awful." When computer-gullible business owners hired Soloway to help increase traffic to their Web sites, Soloway instead sent torrents of spam in their name.

Who is Spamhaus, What is ROKSO?
According to their site, Spamhaus is "WORKING TO PROTECT INTERNET NETWORKS WORLDWIDE -- Spamhaus tracks the Internet's Spammers, Spam Gangs and Spam Services, provides dependable realtime anti-spam protection for Internet networks, and works with Law Enforcement to identify and pursue spammers worldwide." Another site describes Spamhaus as "The Spamhaus Project is a completely volunteer effort founded by Steve Linford in 1998 that aims to track e-mail spammers and spam-related activity. It is named for the anti-spam jargon term coined by Linford, spamhaus, a pseudo-German expression for an ISP or other firm which spams or willingly provides service to spammers."

Soloway originally premiered on the Spamhaus Block List (SBL) in 2001, and by 2003 had made it to Spamhaus's Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO), a compendium of the world's "worst of the worst" illegal spammers. Spamhaus spamtraps were still getting Soloway solicitations from those advertising his services right up until his arrest.

In response to Soloway's arrest, the Spamhaus site wrote, "Spamhaus commends the Seattle FBI and U.S. Attorney for ensuring that the indictment contains both spam-related and non-spam-related counts, and on preparing an indictment which shows so clearly the profile of the typical spammer's activities, such as fraud, identity theft, and other online deception. Spamhaus recognises that a successful prosecution requires careful preparation which inevitably takes longer than the victims of the crime wish. Careful preparation is essential in cases involving CAN-SPAM violations, since the CAN-SPAM Act does not yet have extensive case-law to support it."