Spam King Slapped with 35 Criminal Charges

Robert Alan Soloway, infamous as a prolific spammer, has been arrested in Seattle and charged with several federal offenses. The arrest warrant charges Soloway with 35 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, email-based fraud, identity theft, and money laundering.

A spokesperson for Spamhaus--a company that helps track spam and spammers--said that "Soloway has been a long term nuisance on the internet. He has been sending enormous amounts of spam for years, filling mailboxes and mail servers with unsolicited and unwanted junk email. In addition, he has fraudulently marketed his spam services to others as legitimate 'opt-in' services when they were anything but that, duping innocent users and then failing to provide promised customer support or refunds."

According to the indictment, Soloway tried to sell software that cost anywhere from $195 to $495 and that allegedly contained up to 80 million email addresses of people who supposedly opted into receiving email-based solicitations. "In truth and in fact," the indictment reads, "Robert Alan Soloway well knew the products and services that he sold did not utilize permission-based opt-in email addresses." The indictment goes on to explain in detail how Soloway operated and worked to defraud numerous people.

Soloway faces up to 65 years in prison if convicted along with property loss, forfeiture of bank account balances, and up to $772,998 in monetary judgments.