Comments on: Uber Spammer Alan Ralsky Back In The News

By: eM3rC

eM3rC — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:22:39 +0000

@ Sir Henry

I always wondered how they were able to get such large sums of money around without being noticed. Thanks for the info!

By: goodpeople

goodpeople — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:06:07 +0000

In this case they made the money by artificially raising the stock price of some unknown chinese company. They had bought the shares cheap, forced a buzz on the internet and when the stockprice started rising, they sold their shares.

$3M doesn’t sound like much, but if you consider the fact that it was a chinese penny-stock, the profit was considerable. How many shares could they have bought?

By: Sir Henry

Sir Henry — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:50:22 +0000

@Ian:

Specifically my thoughts regarding the $3 million. Such a paltry sum when you think about it from a scam point.

@eM3rC:

I would think that certain banks in the Caribbean would be perfect for this type of transaction. They normally will eschew any attempts by law enforcement to regain the money gained from the scams. This is why it is so easy for the spammers (and other nefarious types) to get back into business upon release from prison.

By: eM3rC

eM3rC — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:10:18 +0000

Very interesting info Ian.

I was wondering, how do the hackers keep all this money without it being traced? It seems like even the smallest transaction could be traced electronically and hopefully would lead the feds to the source.

It will be a great day when there is no longer spam (although that will never happen =\)

By: Ian Kemmish

Ian Kemmish — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:10:42 +0000

Actually, $3m in a summer is pretty small beer, believe it or not. As my web page shows, the pump-and-dump group forging my email address in spam headers (which may or may not have been Ralsky’s) progressed from modest beginnings to the point where in August 2006 they were grossing over $10m in one day. Since the company whose shares were being pumped in that scam appears to be fake, one can assume that their overheads on this occasion were minimal.

I reported all these scams to the SEC for years. One cannot help but wonder how many people would still have their money if they had only acted sooner.

By: goodpeople

goodpeople — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:42:19 +0000

Let’s hope they find him and bring him down.

By: eM3rC

eM3rC — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:26:21 +0000

Its amazing that people are able to get away with this in my opinion.

If you were to receive a random email in your inbox from a person that you don’t know, would you trust them enough to go to their not-so-well-known site and buy stuff from them?

I think there should be some more stuff on anti-fraud/spam that is available to people who lack computer knowledge, especially for stuff like spam.

Also thought it was interesting that 90% of spam is controlled by roughly 150 people.