Over the weekend several news outlets reported that self proclaimed "Spam King" Alan Ralsky had been arrested by the US Department of Justice.
The report came from a woman who goes by the name "MemeHacker" in an IM conversation with a tech related blog.
"MemeHacker" indicated that Ralsky was picked up last Friday and was being held under a sealed indictment that was due to be opened yesterday. She also mentioned that the spam underground community were in fear of Ralsky making a deal with the DoJ in an attempt to garner a reduced sentence.
Inquires put in to the Department of Justice and Detroit FBI field office resulted in puzzling dead ends as both agencies had no information as to having Ralsky in custody.
Ralsky has long been identified as one of the world's largest spammers by anti-spam organization Spamhaus. The group describes him as a convicted felon who uses virus-infected PCs to send spam, and claims that he has hacked mail servers in the past to spread his spam.
In early October 2005, a warrant was unsealed, showing the FBI raided Alan Ralsky's home in September (2005). In the raid, the FBI took computers and financial records. The home of Ralsky's son-in-law, Scott Bradley, was also raided.
Ralsky was said to have been out of business but not shut down.
"We're out of business at this point in time," Ralsky said. "They didn't shut us down. They took all our equipment, which had the effect of shutting us down."
E-mail this story
Printer-friendly version 
Bookmark this page