US couple fined $236 million for spamming

A US couple who sent vast quantities of spam via a small ISP for around four months in 2003 have been fined a whacking $236 million.

According to the IDG newswire, Perez and Suzanne Bartok used a bulk emailing package to send millions of spammed messages to CIS Internet Services in Iowa.

The small ISP said it had to dedicate three servers to blocking the couple's spam, which amounted to an astonishing 500 million emails every day for around four months in 2003.

"There were millions of e-mails being delivered to us for each spam campaign to users that didn't exist on our servers," said the ISP's big cheese in an interview.

Interestingly, CIS is reported to have won judgements against 10 spammers to date, and other ISPs are watching with interest.

The bad news is that the Bartok's assets probably don't come anywhere near $236 million, so the lawsuit seems to have been academic...