Spam King Sanford Wallace ordered to pay Facebook $711 million

Facebook awarded $711 million in spam lawsuit

Facebook recently won another battle against spam, this time, dethroning the self-proclaimed king of spammers. Found guilty of violating a federal anti-spam law by a California judge, Sanford Wallace has been ordered to pay Facebook $711 million in a civil damages. Facebook originally sought $7 billion in damages.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Facebook claimed Wallace violated the federal anti-spam law, known as CAN-SPAM, roughly 14 million times. Wallace allegedly sent numerous Facebook members a link to a website which tricked them into revealing their login information. Wallace then used these accounts to spam the account holders’ friends with phony messages and wall posts.

“While we don’t expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals,” read an official statement released by the Facebook legal team. “Most notably, the judge referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney’s Office with a request that Wallace be prosecuted for criminal contempt, which means that in addition to the judgment, he now faces possible jail time. This is another important victory in our fight against spam. We will continue to pursue damages against other spammers.”

Rather than bidding the ’spam king’ a fond farewell, most Twitterers made light of the situation, some wanting to know what is going to happen to all that money:

IMN_ (Petersburg, VA) Facebook was awarded $711 million in a spam suit?? Are you kidding me?? Wtf! As if they needed any MORE funding for anything.. Capitalism :/ 30 Oct 2009 from UberTwitter

dwlz (Los Angeles, CA) It’s plain ridiculous that Facebook just got awarded $711 million in spam “damages”. What do the people who were spammed get, if anything? 30 Oct 2009 from web

badcharts (Austin, TX) Facebook awarded $711 million in case against spammer. I think this must have something to do with FarmTown updates. 30 Oct 2009 from HootSuite

KristofferMarc (California) Hi FaceBook, can i get in on that $711 million dollar settlement? No, that’s cool.How about having your iphone application actually work? 30 Oct 2009 from Tweetie

CubanCherub (Undisclosed) Facebook wins $711 million in spam lawsuit. FB said that the award, made in Calif, was the “2nd largest in history” for an anti-spam action. 30 Oct 2009 from web

helveticavtimes (Undisclosed) HvT: Facebook Spammer Has to Pay $711 Million, Your Annoying ‘Friends’ Still Free to Poke You 30 Oct 2009 from Twitter Tools

AaronDavidWard (Ballston Spa, NY) A spammer owes $234 million to MySpace and $711 million to Facebook…and millions of hours to social networkers who have to delete. 01 Nov 2009 from web