Facebook spammer ordered to pay $711 million
- Thread starter TFLNetwork
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Not sure if thats the editor's fault or facebook lol.
According to the article he was already sued by MySpace in the past, course my question is, what exactly did they do to find out exactly who was spamming? Was the guy not covering his tracks?
I'm betting a good deal of money is hiding somewhere, and that filing for bankruptcy (depending on which chapter) means he has none. Also could mean that for example if he were sued as a business and he had an LLC or better, they couldn't touch his personal funds, but he could bankrupt his company.
Thats the thing I hate bout most news articles these days, they don't ever really give you the important details. However I'm sure if someone could look up the case file, it might be publicly available
I'm sure his finances are murky. Regarding past suits, he probably settled for a pittance (pure speculation on my part, of course) with the promise to "never, ever, ever spam again" (insert guffaws).
Here's a short article written a few years ago that mentions one of his other businesses (night club):
Exiled Spam King's Go-Go Life
The dude looks goofy, but he's an animal. Talk about chutzpah.
I don't get why so many marketers are so public... they put their heads on the chopping block. If you read the Wired article Sanford come across as starting out for the money and the principal (1st Amendment BS). When he got spanked, why didn't he just disappear?... let a covert offshore company continue to bring in the cash.
Perry Belcher, Vincent James, Gary Halbert, the recent crowd raped by Oprah, a load of CPA advertisers who you all have promoted for... pump all their money in confiscatable crap and then get stung...why do they let their names get out there?
Perry Belcher, Vincent James, Gary Halbert, the recent crowd raped by Oprah, a load of CPA advertisers who you all have promoted for... pump all their money in confiscatable crap and then get stung...why do they let their names get out there?
Problem: Who would trust you with anything if you had 100% anonymity? Unless you can do the operation completely independently, you will have to relinquish some of your privacy somewhere down the line.
Solution: Only organized crime circles can accomplish complex tasks requiring multiple persons forming the system/scam, with near anonymity.
I guess you could operate on a chained crypto communication system, only numbers assigned to a person / communication is handed down a chain and re-encrypted by the last person to send the communication (minus what was stripped off for the current reader) down the line.
Everyone would operate for a set amount of time, fake/stolen ID to register all networks/visa's/cell phones etc..., lump the cash after time is up, and you wouldn't even need to disappear, you'd simply burn every physical entity that belonged to your fake person.
Of course the entire system would be more elaborate/meticulous but with a basic algorithm operating on a group of individuals, anonymity could be achieved with human error minimized.
I'm going to try to tackle the logistics of this, I've always been interested in, and did a substantial amount of research in personal anonymity. Never considered organized anonymity before.
Offshore servers, offshore LLC, proxies/tor/end-to-end out of your offshore servers (or better, different offshore servers). Offshore bank accounts. Offshore identity.
As far as I can tell the tor/end-to-end + proxies solution allows you to be entirely anonymous so long as you can trust your offshore jurisdiction... now which juris~ can be trusted is the question?
As far as I can tell the tor/end-to-end + proxies solution allows you to be entirely anonymous so long as you can trust your offshore jurisdiction... now which juris~ can be trusted is the question?
There's a multitude of problems with this assuming you're a US citizen, even more so if you reside in the US.
It mainly revolves around how you pull money out of the company and into the US, if/how you pay taxes on this, etc etc etc. Many a hardened criminal has gone to jail over silly tax laws broken when nothing else sticks.
The other aspects which you mention regarding trust aren't the only factors. Many of our south American neighbors claim that they give the US the big 'fuck you' on inquiries assuming no evidence showing you're a terrorist organization, etc. However while I have zero first hand knowledge whether this is true mere perusing shows that there are steep fees to pay for this - I've seen anywhere from 5-7% of incoming bank deposits. Factor in changing currency and you better not be running thin margin high volume plays <ahem- media buys>, as this could put a big damper in things financially.
I think the real issue for people like Sanford is why the fuck they're still residing in the US, or even visiting frequently. The way all sorts of games are played, via loopholes/creativity are foreign based private equity companies and holding companies/technology incubators where someone is now an investor and isn't an officer nor responsible for any day to day dealings of an independently managed foreign company who might actually be pushing the envelope with their operations.
The problem with this of course is that it takes a lot more money and involvement to do it right.
You piss off anyone to the tune of $700M+ and you better believe everything is gonna be pierced.
Anonymity is easy if you structure your companies correctly and assign a "bearer share" with your name on it, but simply keep the bearer share with a personal and loyal friend or somone you can trust. Unless that piece of paper is discovered, nobody can pin the company to you. But of course there's more to it and it involves a lot of work. Usually it's the simple things you don't think of that get you nailed.
I know his partner/ex-partner... lives 15 minutes away... both together, lost a lawsuit law year to Myspace for over 260 million as well.
his partners exact words "I get sued and lose a lot, but I always make more than what I lose."
his partners exact words "I get sued and lose a lot, but I always make more than what I lose."
I've met sanford wallace before the guy told me and my partner everything about how he started hes pretty smart. nice when he's not spamming i guess
Whatever guys, that person dint simply SPAM.He stole Accounts and used them for Spamming.I anyway pity the Fool who got Sued for such a lot of Money.
Spammers will keep spamming. There are just too many ways that I know of how to hide the money from the lawyers, FTC's and AG's. It just makes too much money.
It's a white collar crime... I mean shit. If your a good spammer you'll make a couple million dollars before anything bad happens to you, then you'll get thrown in jail for a couple months? Life is hard out there for white collar criminals...
It's a white collar crime... I mean shit. If your a good spammer you'll make a couple million dollars before anything bad happens to you, then you'll get thrown in jail for a couple months? Life is hard out there for white collar criminals...
I worked as a phone monkey for an ISP back in '97-'99. Sanford Wallace was a customer of ours, and caused us a lot of problems. We had tons of complaints about him, but we tried to be "carrier neutral" back then, one of the first ISP's to do so.
We called him "Spamford" Wallace even back then. One time I answered the phone when he called to open a trouble ticket, and I called him Spamford accidentally on purpose. I said "Hey Spamford, er Sanford." He was cool with it, laughed it off.
He's been at it over 10 years.. he started with junk faxes.
We called him "Spamford" Wallace even back then. One time I answered the phone when he called to open a trouble ticket, and I called him Spamford accidentally on purpose. I said "Hey Spamford, er Sanford." He was cool with it, laughed it off.
He's been at it over 10 years.. he started with junk faxes.