MySpace spammers fined US$230m

Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines were fined a whopping US$230 million for the spam attacks.

However, MySpace is unlikely to see the money since the pair failed to turn up in court and have gone missing.

"The judgement against the spammers is astronomical because each spam message entitles MySpace to $100 in damages under the terms of the Can-Spam Act," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"In the war against spam it is right that large companies should have a heavy stick like this to hit the spammers with. But these two are just the tip of the iceberg.

"Even if MySpace were to extricate the fine from these two men, which seems unlikely given their past record, there will be plenty more cyber-criminals trying to make money from junk email."

According to court records, Wallace and Rines sent 735,925 messages and earned over US$500,000 in the process. Some emails contained links to pornographic sites that were sent to children, causing a storm of complaints.

Wallace already has an outstanding US$4 million fine from the Federal Trade Commission after losing a case over the installation of spyware on users' computers.