Ah so Mr Alan Ralsky one of the biggest spammers of all-time is back in the news after his indictment with 10 others for running a large scale spam operation intended to inflate stocks artificially.
At one time it was thought Mr Ralsky and his friends were responsible for the majority of the spam sent, he’s certainly one of the most prolific and there are around 150 spammers in the World responsible for about 90% of the spam received.
Infamous spam king Alan M. Ralsky is on the run following the Jan. 3 indictment of Ralsky and 10 others for operating a sophisticated spam scam involving pump-and-dump Chinese stocks.
The 41-count indictment, unsealed in a Detroit federal court, claims Ralsky, 52, and his fellow defendants operated a wide-ranging international fraud scheme involving millions of illegal e-mails touting thinly-traded Chinese penny stocks. Ralsky profited by selling the stock at artificially inflated prices.
Only two of the defendants appeared in court Jan. 3 for arraignment. Ralsky is reportedly at large in Europe.
It looks like he wants to skip on this one. It is a pretty serious case though – international stock fraud.
According to the indictment, Ralsky and his group earned approximately $3 million on the scheme during the summer of 2005. Ralsky faces charges including conspiracy, fraud in connection with electronic mail, computer fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
The illegal e-mail practices cited in the indictment include evading spam-blocking devices, falsifying headers and domain names, using proxy computers to distribute the spam and misrepresenting the advertising content in the actual e-mail.
Ralsky seems to have made a good living from spamming when back in his palatial, 8,000-square-foot mansion in suburban Detroit was raided. He was living well.
He has admitted that spam had made him a millionaire.
Source: eWeek
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.
Let’s hope they find him and bring him down.
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.
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 =\)
@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.
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?
@ Sir Henry
I always wondered how they were able to get such large sums of money around without being noticed. Thanks for the info!