Chicago (IL) - One of the largest spam rings on the Internet lost a battle to the Federal Trade Commission today in a preliminary hearing, thus causing a Chicago court to freeze the group’s assets in an effort to shut the spam operation down.
 
The group used several different names, but was mainly known as HerbalKing. The organization was able to send billions of unsolicited e-mails to Internet users during the past twenty months. The group’s emails promote replica watches and various drugs among which are weight loss and male enhancement products. HerbalKing utilized a botnet, is a huge global network of computers infected with malicious software that have been infected without their owners’ knowledge.

Marshal Software aided the FTC in their investigation and estimated the botnet software used by the group was comprised of about 35,000 computers and was capable of sending 10 billion e-mail messages each day. Marshal Software estimated that in January this particular botnet was the leading source of all spam mail on the Internet.

The FTC investigators also claim to have been closely monitoring the finances of the group and that they had cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in only one month. This sum may actually not reflect the entire income as previous research done by this author revealed that top spammers, which are typically compensated with a 20-40% share of products sold through their emails sent, easily rake in several millions of dollars each month.

The FTC has brought over 100 cases against spammers and spyware vendors in the last ten years. However, this spam operation is considered to be the largest that has been encountered with connections in Australia, India, the United States, New Zealand and China.

The commission requested that the federal district court in Chicago freeze the finances, claiming that the members had been utilizing both unfair and deceptive advertising methods and thus violating the Can-Spam Act of 2003. This law allows for both civil and criminal penalties for spammers who falsify information in e-mail messages and then do not offer ways for consumers to unsubscribe.

The government also wants a hand in this case and is pursuing criminal charges against the group. Members of the spam gang have had search warrants served against them by the FBI.

The HerbalKing group was capable of handling their ordeals on an international level. It was shipping drugs such as Propecia, Lipitor, Celebrex, and Zoloft from India. The FTC claims that the group ran their websites from China and were processing credit cards from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and Cyprus and transferred funds between members utilizing ePassporte.

During the investigation, the commission purchased herbal pills from the group and tested them through the FDA. The FDA discovered that the pills contained the same active ingredient found in Viagra – sildenafil - which can be dangerous for individuals who have heart conditions.

Even though this is a huge spam bust, it is rather unlikely that the overall number of spam emails will decline.

woot!

Oct 15, 2008 14:59     

thank god because im tired of the 150 $1 viagra emails. i almost feel like they were targeted at me.
craig report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

Good job FCC!...

Oct 15, 2008 15:42     

Good job FCC!
David report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

amen

Oct 15, 2008 15:57     

The govt gets things right sometimes. I say lock them up and feed them spam and eggs for 10 years!
Stew Pidd report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

Well done

Oct 15, 2008 16:24     

I have had these emails one Spam ring shut down a heap to go. Good job FTC
Jonathan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Wait, the FTC had it out with them in court?!

Oct 15, 2008 16:37     

When these guys were running a botnet of thousands of compromised PCs? What is the world coming to, these guys should have been cuffed and shutdown immediately.
hank report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

Cut their...

Oct 15, 2008 17:22     

Cut their nuts off. Make the penalty so bad that others think twice about spamming. And who the hell is the dumb ****er buying drugs from a spammer on the internet? Who is that STUPID?
Dozer42 report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

They were caught, yet there are sill many more

Oct 15, 2008 20:12     

Good news, but the two email accounts I use still get around 30 spam messages each day. Currently, my gmail has around 1240 in junk folder, and that is just from last 30 days. Hotmail has less, since I delete it almost every day.
lithdoc report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

I got on their list...

Oct 15, 2008 20:25     

...though replying to a craiglist respondant. At the time I thought my reply communications were masked too, and they are not. I have seen a dramatic decrease in my personal spam in the last 24 hours.. almost none at all, now. Cool. Thanks, uncle sam.
Scott report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

I don't get it

Oct 15, 2008 23:38     

Why is spamming so hard to combat? I don't get why there's such a huge spam industry in our country, you shouldn't be allowed to deceive people into giving their emails(fake craigslist here), and refuse to let them remove themselves, or even worse, using the opportunity to sell off their email to even more spammers. Can someone explain why they had to fight them this way?
Revrant report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

To: Revrant (Re: I don't get it)

Oct 16, 2008 00:52     

Spam is very hard to fight. I ran an ISP for 12 years and we had to keep improving our spam filters every few months. It's a back and forth war. We upgrade our filters to catch more spam, then they just tweak the spam a bit and send it out to test accounts on the major providers. When it slips through, that's what they run with for a while. It used to be just replacing an i with a !, I.E. v!agra, but now they're using all sorts of fun tricks like images, etc. Part of the problem is that email is inherently insecure, it's trivial to forge a 'from' address. And then there's the botnet issue. They make a virus, infect a couple million computers, and zombie those computers to send the spam (that's what these guys were doing). There's a really easy way to stop spam once and for all, and it's completely free. Check out http://www.qyv.com for details. =]

Dozer42 report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Good job FTC!

Oct 16, 2008 09:01     

I wish they would catch more of this HUGE LARGE rings, spam email is very annoying and is getting worst and worst each day, than again.. from what I heard there is a lot of money to be made.
steve report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0