Spam King Pleads Guilty

Filed in archive Spam News on March 15, 2008

"Spam King" Robert Soloway pled guilty in a Seattle court to felony mail fraud, fraud in connection with Electronic mail, and failing to file a tax return in 2005. He was set to go on trial to face a 40-count indictment that included 13 counts of money laundering and seven counts of aggravated identity theft. His guilty plea Friday was in exchange for those charges being dropped. He now faces a 20-year prison term and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Solway also had a $10 million judgment levied against him in Oklahoma and was slammed with a third from Microsoft. Despite the fact he made over $300,000 from his spam activities in 2005 alone, Solway claims he's broke.

His spam activities revolved around a package deal he sold to other spammers. For $495, Soloway promised to spam 20 million addresses for 15 days or sell them 80,000 addresses to spam themselves.