Fergie's Tech Blog

Pharma Spammer Gets 30 Years in Prison

Anne Broache writes on the C|Net News Blog:

AOL once deemed an infamous Minnesota spammer named Christopher William Smith "the poster child for the Can-Spam Act."

A federal judge in his home state on Wednesday had a new name for the convicted junk mailer: "drug kingpin." He sentenced Smith to 30 years in prison for multiple charges stemming from his highly lucrative online drugstore, whose illegal sales brought in about $24 million, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis reports.

U.S. authorities originally arrested Smith in 2005 on belief that he had moved his business, called XPress Pharmacy, to the Dominican Republic after his stateside operations were ordered to cease.

Smith, who went by the moniker "Rizler," first gained notoriety by reportedly blasting to AOL subscribers billions of junk e-mails promoting the usual array of spamalicious goods: "generic Viagra," porn, cable TV descramblers and penis-enhancement pills, according to reports. Security experts once ranked him among their most prolific offenders.

posted by Fergie @ 8/02/2007 09:51:00 AM