The so-called "Buffalo Spammer" was arrested this week in New York following a year of investigative work by Earthlink's anti-fraud department and law enforcement. Like many spammers, the Buffalo Spammer sent millions of unsolicited emails, or spam, to unsuspecting users, offering them a variety of bogus deals, including cars, free money, 716 area codes, and the like. But it wasn't the email offers that finally got the Buffalo Spammer in trouble. Instead, prosecutors in New York say the 36 year-old-man used false identities to illegally set up Earthlink email accounts using stolen credit cards. So he's been charged with forgery and identity theft, because New York has yet to criminalise spam, as some other US states have done.
The Buffalo Spammer was one of the most daring spammers yet, however. In a fascinating full-page report in the Wall Street Journal last week, the paper described the year-long battle against the spammer and the ways he would repeatedly show up on the Earthlink network with new accounts and new ploys. Earthlink's investigators would shut down the spammer again and again, only to see new accounts appear and spam begin to flow again. Eventually, the man was traced to Buffalo, New York, though the email he sent was untraceable; instead, they traced telephone numbers used in follow-up emails to find his address. Earthlink says the Buffalo Spammer sent over 825 million spam e-mails and used 343 stolen identities during his year-long spree, and he even taunted investigators on the phone, explaining that he would never be caught.
If spam is such a huge and growing problem, why are spammers so infrequently prosecuted? Stephen Kline, an assistant attorney general in New York, told attendees at an antispam conference recently that there's little financial incentive. It's very tough to justify spending so much time and money on cases where we aren't getting any penalties or any money back to consumers," he said. In the case of the Buffalo Spammer, however, he had violated various state laws and, as it turns out, he was also a second-time offender, thanks to a 1996 bank fraud conviction. That means the Buffalo Spammer could face up to 7 years in jail.