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Spam King Alan Ralsky rumored to be in jail
April 29, 2006
The spamming underworld is freaking out on the rumor that Ralsky is going to cough up some sort of plea bargain that involves ratting just about everyone out.
Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag has an unconfirmed report from someone saying that Alan Ralsky is currently being held by the feds and his file is sealed for the next 72hrs by the DOJ.
A DOJ official contacted by InfoWorld said he hadn't heard of the arrest. But according to "Memehacker," the underworld hacking scene is all abuzz about the arrest and indictment."We are concerned that he is going to narq out the entire network since they have enough on him to send him to jail. This means hackers, spammers, anyone who has worked in spam legally or illegally for the last 5 years at least. The DOJ wants to do a dragnet, they have the top dog, but they want the whole system as well.
"There is a risk of a huge network collapse in the hack scene. I couldn't estimate since I don't know who he has worked with, but it's a lot of people. Think of a huge pyramid with him at the top. He is one of the few people that has knowledge of a large part of the hackscene network."
Ralsky is a near legend in the spam community -- the subject of a raft of lawsuits from Verizon and others for his shameless spamming activity.
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.
Ralsky, 60, seems an incongruous character in an industry largely made up of men from the Nintendo generation. "You have a bunch of kids in their late 20's doing this with a lot more technical knowledge than I have. But they don't have any business sense."
Ralsky claims that he is not a spammer, but a legitimate email marketer who abides by the law.
"There is no way this can be stopped," Ralsky said. "It's a perfectly legal business that has allowed anybody to compete with the Fortune 500 companies."
Ralsky makes his money by charging the companies that hire him to send bulk e-mail a commission on sales. He sometimes charges just a flat fee, up to $22,000, for a single mailing to his 250 million e-mail addresses database.
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Ralsky:
"When you're sending out 250 million e-mails, even a blind squirrel will find a nut"
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In December 2002, Ralsky did an interview with The Detroit News that provoked an outcry among users of the Internet. The article was posted on Slashdot, and some readers hatched a plan to give him a taste of his own medicine.
A reader obtained the address to his new home and posted it there. Hundreds of Slashdot readers then searched the Internet for advertising mailing lists or free catalogs and signed up with his address. As a result he was inundated with junk mail every day. He is quoted as saying "They've signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is ... These people are out of their minds. They're harassing me".
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, financial records, and even The Detroit News article cited earlier. 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."
Anti-spammers noted some spam has continued to appear from the resources owned by Ralsky, although at a very small fraction of Ralsky's original volume.
RELATED:
FBI raid shuts down world's most prolific spammer
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