http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/security/spam-mastermind-faces-court-20091216-kwe3.html

A Sunshine Coast man accused of being the mastermind of the world's largest online spam operation ... allegedly controlled a "botnet" of 35,000 computers, capable of sending 10 billion email messages a day .... advertising bogus male enhancement drugs and weight loss pills shipped from India, which they falsely claimed had come from a licensed pharmacy

The US Government gave him a 16 million dollar fine.
The NZ Government gave him a 100 thousand dollar fine.
The AU Government gave him a 200 thousand dollar fine.

He's still smiling though, bet he made s***loads more.

Also want to make note of his clothes, a black silky shirt and a maroon tie... come on... that is what satan would wear if he had to go to court.

Where do you store 35k computers?

Where do you store 35k computers?

Uhhh... a botnet would mean he's piggybacked on peoples computers from all over the world.

Botnets are a criminal offence - if he's convicted of that he can (should) get jail time (reference)

edit: that's actually a pretty up-to-date piece of legislation we've got there - good to see some pro-active laws that are actually useful for a change

That's the point of a botnet, they are not your computers, they are other people's home and business PC's that you've hacked (relatively automatically)

he's got more than enough money to cover his fines I'd say
I doubt he will do it very tough in the years to come

how would he have enough money to pay those fines when all proceedings of criminal activities are confiscated

How many people actually pay for those spam things??? How much money could he have possibly made?

I reckon if the guy's smart enough to get 35,000 botnet running probably managed to launder some of his money along the way.

i wouldnt think that at all. computer knowledge doesnt always mean they have a clue about how to be a decent, smart criminal

How many people actually pay for those spam things???

For viagra? I reckon they'd get heaps ... a discreet and cheap CC charge vs. an embarrassing trip to the doctor to explain why you can't get it up anymore, and a prescription for an expensive pill?

Fortunately I set new standards for diamond-level hardness but I can definitely imagine the lure :)

I'm always surprised how much money is involved with bots and spam. These bozos get paid $1000USD for 10k bots for 24hours. So 35k bots could net him $3500USD/day every day. Plus if his trojans are solid RATs (remote access tool) he can gather data about your banking websites or even credit cards to sell on to others, he can install keyloggers to steal your WoW account login and sell it for $500 online. So many ways to make money illegally online.

If he was smart he would have just bought a bunch of netbooks, attached wheels and legs to them, and made them go on missions to find wifi connections and create his botnet like that. Then when the time came they could even spring him from jail.
I don't need to justify anything I just said.

If he did get USD $3,500 / day, then he only got $1.5 million (14 month scam). So, he very well may be in debt now.

How come the american fine is so hilariously large compared to the NZ/AUS ones (or why are our so small) ?

Cause the impact against australian addresses is small versus the US surface area of email targets. Hotmail and gmail would be a large factor in the emails spammed and those are american owned.

If he did get USD $3,500 / day, then he only got $1.5 million (14 month scam). So, he very well may be in debt now.

Thats the botnet he was proven to have controlled. Many botnet owners go through about 200k-300k bots in a year. Clean ups and hijackings are common which will spike numbers up and down over time.

it's probably cheaper for him to pay lawyers to just hold the court cases up indefinitely, just fyi

Cause the impact against australian addresses is small versus the US surface area of email targets. Hotmail and gmail would be a large factor in the emails spammed and those are american owned.

http://memegenerator.net/Instances/701/Success-Kid-AMERICA-f***-YEAH.jpg

last edited by Tiny at 17:38:57 16/Dec/09