Self-proclaimed “Spam King” Sanford Wallace has reportedly been sentenced to 30 months in prison and has been ordered to pay $310,000 in fines.
Wallace—who has admitted to using around a half-million Facebook accounts to send more than 27 million unsolicited messages on the social network—compromised more than 500,000 Facebook accounts between 2008 and 2009, according to The Verge. By sending users links to external websites that harvested their login credentials and friend lists, he then spammed them with links to other websites, earning money by directing traffic their way.
Last August, Wallace pled guilty to charges of fraud and criminal contempt and faced up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine for his activities at the time.
This recent sentence is the first time Wallace has been convicted of a crime, according to The Verge. The Spam King pleaded guilty to one count of “fraud and related activity in connection with electronic mail.” His two-and-a-half year jail sentence is just short of the three-year maximum he was facing.
Wallace’s spamming career dates back to the ’90s, when he sent junk fax messages, before turned to email. Despite protests from SPAM foodstuff maker Hormel, his critics named him “Spamford”–a domain he later registered. He also dabbled in spyware and MySpace spamming, which resulted in a lawsuit in 2007.
