FBI Raids Spam King

17 Oct, 2005 at 11:41am ET Article published in Tech

The Detroit News Technology is reporting that the FBI has raided spam king Alan Ralsky’s home in Michigan, effectively putting a stop to his mass email operation.

Warrants unsealed last week revealed that agents in September seized computers, laptops, financial records and disks from the 8,000-square-foot home of Mr. Ralsky. The $750,000 West Bloomfield mini-mansion was built off profits from the 100 million electronic offers for everything from Botox to mortgages that Ralsky sends every day.

“We’re out of business at this point in time,” Ralsky said last week. “They didn’t shut us down. They took all our equipment, which had the effect of shutting us down.”

Source: The Detroit News Technology

Comments

17 Oct 2005 ~ 11:43am Garg Sweet
17 Oct 2005 ~ 11:51am RADA :Pwned: Go FBI!
17 Oct 2005 ~ 12:31pm primesuspect Waah. They shut us down... how sad.

Not that this is really significant. For every Alan Ralsky there's twenty Hong Wen Tsu's and twenty Ilya Nastrovich's out there.
17 Oct 2005 ~ 12:54pm TheSmJ To think that this guy was right in my backyard the whole time.
17 Oct 2005 ~ 2:11pm Leonardo If convicted, his perfect sentence would be to sit in front of a computer monitor for the next few years with nothing to read except SPAM. Before he could listen to any telephone calls, he'd have to listen to telemarketing. No TV, just informercials. No hard copy mail - just SPAM.

Oh well, another one is flushed.
17 Oct 2005 ~ 2:36pm DanG I have no doubt that he'll be back. There's still far too much money to be made in spamming.
Spamhaus still lists him as the #1 spammer in the world.
http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/listing.lasso?-op=cn&spammer=Alan%20Ralsky
17 Oct 2005 ~ 2:59pm Winga One down one million to go. There's a sucker born every minute, so there will always be people like him around to exploit that. Still feels good to know that to some extent, justice has been done.