Fergie's Tech Blog

UK: Alleged spammer refuses to disclose location of ill-gotten funds

John Leyden writes in The Register:

Peter Francis-Macrae, the 23-year-old who's allegedly the UK's biggest spammer, has testified that he may have "over stepped the mark" in posing as an approved domain registrar at his trial at Peterborough Crown Court this week. Francis-Macrae faces a variety of charges ranging from threats to kill to fraudulent trading.

Operating from a bedroom in his father's home in the village of of St. Neots, Cambs, Francis-Macrae allegedly made an estimated £1.5m through a series of domain registration scams, promoted using bulk email. He is accused of fraudulently selling unavailable .eu domains among other dubious business practices dating back five years. He's also accused of sending out fraudulent re-registration letters to UK domain owners.

[...] in his testimony Francis-Macrae refused to disclose the location of an estimated £425,000 he'd earned through his domain registration activities. A number of accounts run by Francis-Macrae in the UK have been frozen and thousands in cash were seized when police raided his home but hundreds of thousands remain unaccounted.

posted by Fergie @ 11/09/2005 09:07:00 AM