Wallace pleads guilty to fraud, criminal contempt.
By Raif Karerat
A man known as the “Spam King” has pleaded guilty in a Las Vegas court to sending more than 27 million unsolicited messaged through Facebook’s servers after gaining access to about 500,000 accounts on the social network.
Sanford Wallace, 47, admitted to his mass spamming in 2008 and 2009 while pleading guilty Monday to fraud and criminal contempt, San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said in a statement, per Bloomberg.
The notorious spammer was also found to have violated a court order banning him from Facebook by logging onto the site while onboard a Virgin Airlines flight in 2009. He violated the court order again in 2011 by maintaining a profile under the name “David Sinful-Saturdays Fredericks,” according to an FBI press release.
Fortune disclosed he faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine for his offenses.
facebook is only the latest medium that Wallace has spammed with dedicated attrition. Throughout the mid-90s, he spammed people through fax, then through e-mail, according to Ars Technica.
He also dipped into spyware and MySpace spamming, which resulted in a lawsuit in 2007. A representative from Facebook indicated the current leader in social media was similarly unimpressed with Wallace’s illicit activities.
“On top of the technical measures we employ to defeat spam on our service, we actively pursue both civil and criminal consequences for those who try to harm people who use Facebook,” a spokesman for the social network informed The Register.