Chicago (IL) – Facebook has won a big judgment against a major spammer, who flooded members of the social networking site with “unwanted and, sometimes, inappropriate marketing messages.” Atlantis Blue Capital, run by Adam Guerbuez, will have to pay more than $873 million in statutory and aggravated statutory damages.  

Most sentences against spammers are not nearly high enough to have an impact on spamming operations. However, the latest case, filed by Facebook against Atlantis Blue Capital on August 14 of this year, is likely to put on company out of business. Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel awarded Facebook $873,277,200 in damages for accessing the company’s servers, setting up phishing websites to acquire Facebook logins and email addresses and sending more than 4 million emails to Facebook’s members.

Those numbers translate into a cost of about $218. Max Kelly, Facebook's director of security, said that the company does not expect that it will be able to “quickly collect” the funds. “It's unlikely that Geurbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can),” he wrote in a blog post.

“But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users.”

The sentence against Atlantis Blue Capital also forbids Geurbuez to access or retain Facebook data, assist others to access the data and create or maintain a Facebook profile,

“This judgment is the result of the tireless effort of our security experts, legal team and the other significant resources we've devoted to finding, exposing and prosecuting the sources of spam attacks,” Kelly wrote. “These efforts complement the sophisticated technical systems we continue to develop to limit the impact of these attacks or to block them altogether.”

About Time

Nov 24, 2008 15:10     

It's good to read items like this. I only hope that other spammers will get sentenced with fines like this.
Joshua report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +11

holy crap

Nov 24, 2008 15:20     

That is a HUGE fine. Serves those spamming bastards right!
James report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Bailout.

Nov 24, 2008 15:41     

Let's bail out Facebook. ;-)
StudyMaster report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Do spammers make billions?

Nov 24, 2008 16:04     

How can this spam corporation pay $0.87 billion unless they make about that much or more? Do spammers make that much bucks? And if so, why haven't this spamming operation been taken over by the government yet? :)
Joe Citizen report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

Goverment bailout

Nov 24, 2008 17:42     

Not to worrie... most likely they can claim the same help citibank is getting too, and they be back in no time. Todays corporation can just calim a bailout from the government, and "voila"... all is good again.
Pete report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

No Mercy for Spammer

Nov 24, 2008 18:21     

They should be sentenced to the electric chair for causing work efficiency drop and loss of internet bandwidth from their activities. If Jeremy Fogel cannot pay up, The US government should take him and sell him off along with other SPAMMER accomplist of his to Drug Companies for clinical trials. At least this way, they would be able to help boost efficiency in another industry to compensate back the loss of efficiency they caused in the IT industry.

MR T report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

A fine is not enough!

Nov 25, 2008 09:04     

Spammers should do some jail time (with NO internet access) and then be banned from having any internet connection or internet capable mobile for LIFE.
Matthew report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

all to FaceBook?

Nov 25, 2008 11:38     

major payoff to facebook, but it was the users that got the spam, why is facebook getting all the money when it was the recipients that suffered.
Stephen report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

@ Joe Citizen

Nov 25, 2008 12:42     

You would be surprised at how many people actually buy stuff from ad's and email spam. Thats the only reason they are still spamming, because people keep buying. You can thank every idiot doing that for the amount of spam we have today.
REM report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

Shit dudes, it's just spam

Nov 26, 2008 13:51     

some outragus comments over spam here. Why don't people make some of these same arguments over the garbage we recieve in the postal mail system? That affects the environment, spam is just bits. Besides, with our economy where it is, arn't more people EATING Spam??? "spammy spam spam spammy spam spam spam!" -- monty python.
Its spam for crying out loud report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1