Scott Richter made the news again in 2007, MySpace sued him for phishing and spamming their members. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission became active in shutting down pump & dump spamming organizations. Several major companies, including the Bank of America and Pfizer were found to be hosting zombie computers. Physician, heal thyself. New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore adopted anti-spam legislation. Penis pill pusher DM Contact Management settled their class-action lawsuit. Robert Soloway was arrested for spamming and a raft of other crimes. Mark Mumma lost his case against Cruise.com and the defendant is awarded $2,500,000 in damages. Jeremy Jaynes appealed his conviction. Canadian Xavier Ratelle was the first person charged under the U.S. Safe Web Act.
January 2007
Cisco bought IronPort (including SpamCop and SenderBase) for $830,000,000
The infamous ‘hitman’ spam circulated; a hitman threatens recipients will be killed unless they pay an extortion fee. Thus far, no-one has reportedly turned up dead.
Jeffrey Brett Goodin is found guilty of phishing AOL users under CAN-SPAM, faces 101 years in prison. Goodin was also convicted of 10 other counts, including wire fraud, misuse of the AOL trademark and attempted witness harassment.
The Storm virus was released, it infects 8% of all users within weeks.
MySpace sued Scott Richter for spamming and phishing under CAN-SPAM and California statutes.
Sophos found that in 2006, the United States at 34.2% of all sites containing malicious code, China hosted 31%.
South Korea arrested two un-named men for spamming and phishing
South Korea arrested a man identified only as ‘Park’ for spamming, he faces 3 years in prison and $31,000 in fines if convicted.
IBM warned of the emergence of the "exploits-as-a service" industry as cybercriminals organize into sophisticated malware manufacturing and distribution networks.
February 2007
OPTA won a spam case in The Netherlands, an unnamed man is fined $97,000.
Joshua Eveloff, 27, of Carter Lake, Iowa admits to spamming. He faces three years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 for the crime, under CAN-SPAM. His partner, Michael Twombly, of Cardiff also plead guilty.
The Singapore anti-spam law went to Parliament.
Verizon Wireless won $200,000 in damages from Specialized Programming and Marketer, and its owner Charles Henderson.
The New Zealand Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act was passed by legislature.
Jeffrey Horton of Colorado won a class action lawsuit against DM
Contact Management Ltd., a British Columbia corporation, Leading Edge
Marketing Inc., a British Columbia corporation, Advanced Botanicals,
Ltd., a British Columbia Corporation, Leading Edge Marketing Inc., a
Bahamas corporation Leading Edge Marketing Inc., a Cyprus company,
Leading Edge Marketing Inc., a dissolved Colorado corporation,
Technhpak, Llc, a Colorado limited liability company, and Unipay
Processing, Ltd., a Cyprus company and Geoffrey M. Mackay, Andrew A.
Mackay, Douglas R. Mackay, Mark D. Scheidt, Matthew Clayton, and Warren
S. Brander. The penis enlargement pills sold through DM
Contact Management, VigRX, apparently do not work as advertised.
March 2007
Gordon Dick of Edinburgh Scotland won £750 in damages and £616.66 for legal costs against British firm Transcom in Edinburgh’s Sheriff Court.
The Securities and Exchange Commission suspended trading for 35 companies engaged in pump & dump spam. As well, they froze the assets of phishers inflating stocks by way of breached user accounts at E-Trade, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Scottrade, Vanguard Brokerage Services, Fidelity Investments and Merrill Lynch
Support Intelligence found that major companies such as Bank of America, Toshiba, AIG, and Business Week are hosting zombie computers on their networks.
April 2007
The New Zealand Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act came into force.
Australia’s Telstra BigPond blocks gmail servers due to spam
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/security/telstra-google-in-spam-spat/2007/04/10/1175971083629.html
Singapore anti-spam law passed the vote in Parliament.
The Securities and Exchange Commission suspended trading of Amerossi EC, Irwin Resources and Peopleline Telecom, 3 companies that trade on the Pink sheets, as part of a crackdown on suspected pump-and-dump trading schemes.
Project Honey Pot, a service of Unspam Technologies LLC filed a major lawsuit on behalf of their users against address harvesters.
May 2007
The Internet Engineering Task Force gave preliminary approval to DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM).
Hong Kong implemented The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance. The maximum penalty for spamming offenses is a fine up to 1 million HK dollars and imprisonment up to five years.
Google purchased anti-spam/anti-virus technology company GreenBorder Technologies Inc.
Robert Alan Soloway is arrested in Seattle and he and his company, Newport Internet Marketing charged with mail fraud, identity theft, fraud and money laundering, He is facing up to 65 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
MySpace settled with The Globe.com Inc. and won $5,500,000 in damages.
ClearMyMail said Talk Talk is the most spammed UK ISP.
Omega World Travel, and its subsidiary Cruise.com won the case filed against them by Mark Mumma and are awarded $2,500,000 in damages.
A class action suit was filed against TD Ameritrade Holding alleging company knew of a data breach for over a year.
June 2007
Spamhaus SURBL and URIBL were DDoSed
China launched an anti-spam website run by the Internet Society of China, iscbl.anti-spam.cn with black and whitelists of servers
Robert Soloway is denied bail
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/319682_spamking14.html
The U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona in Phoenix convicted Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, California, and James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, under CAN-SPAM.
Omega World Travel and Cruise.com see damages owed to them by Mark Mumma reduced to $330,000.
The Srizbi trojan was launched.
July 2007
A trojan called Trojan.Spammer.HotLan.A was released. The malware creates Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts used to send spam.
The FTC held The Spam Summit Workshop
Darrel Uselton and his uncle, Jack Uselton were charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud related to spammed pump & dump promotions. $4,200,000 is seized .
Law firm Azar & Associates’ Barracuda appliance blocked e-mail from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado including a notification of a court date which the firm missed. They were ordered ordered to pay attorney fees and expenses incurred by the lawyers who showed up representing the other side of the case.
SpammerX published "Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side".
Anti-spammer Patrick Peterson of Ironport was interviewed in Forbes.
Google acquired Postini.
August 2007
Nicholas Tombros of Venice California was sentenced to three years’ probation and six months’ home detention for spamming over open WIFI networks.
The biggest pump & dump spam run ever spiked volume by 445%.
September 2007
New Zealand’s Unsolicited Electronic Messages (UEM) Act 2007 came into force.
Support Intelligence found Pfizer computers were compromised, and spamming illicit Viagra offers, for half a year.
Jeremy Jaynes appealed his conviction on the basis of free speech making the law unconstitutional.
Four months after a class-action lawsuit is filed over the incident, and apparently a year after they knew, TD Ameritrade admitted they were hacked, and had 6,000,000 email addresses stolen.
ISP Onetel’s email service was unavailable for over a month due to spam attack on its 30,000 users.
October 2007
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission suspended trading in three stocks, Alliance Transcription Services, Prime Petroleum Group and T.W. Christian, for being "susceptible" to pump & dump scams.
The FTC filed charges under CAN-SPAM against Bruce Parker and Lisa Kimsey dba Spear Systems, Inc., and Canadian Xavier Ratelle dba eHealthylife.com. The action is the first brought by the agency under the U.S. Safe Web Act.
Jeffrey A. Kilbride of Venice, California, and James R. Schaffer of Paradise Valley, Arizona were sentenced to 72 months and 63 months respectively in prison for spamming pornography, conspiracy, money laundering, fraud and transportation of obscene materials. They also forfeited $1,300,000.
A keylogger was spammed using fake FTC graphics and a sending address.
MP3 spams were the hot new thing, after PDFs and Microsoft Word files began being filtered.
November 2007
A restraining order was issued against Sili Neutraceuticals dba Kaycon Ltd. and Brian McDaid when they were charged by the FTC under CAN-SPAM
Todd Moeller of New Jersey was sentenced to 27 months in prison for his part of a spam scheme that he ran with Adam Vitale of New York, hitting 1,200,000 AOL users.
Washington state Judge Judith Eiler ruled that spam is "personal e-mail" exempt from anti-spam laws if it’s written in a style that suggests familiarity with the recipient.
Spam Arrest won their five-year trademark case against Hormel, and the right to use ‘spam’ in their name.
December 2007
Adteractive Inc. settled with the FTC, paying $650,000 for deceptive spam
Colorado considered tougher anti-spam laws.
Min Kim of Colorado was sentenced to 30 months in prison for violating the CAN-SPAM act.
A court determined that spam is not illegal in Israel.
The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs carried out anti-spam raids in Christchurch, seizing 22 computers that were part of an international spamming operation.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/email/news/article.cfm?c_id=188&objectid=10483539
