Godfather Of Spam To Face Four Years In Jail

Alan Ralsky, the unofficial ‘Godfather of Spam’ has been sentenced to fifty-one months in prison along with five years of supervised probation and a $250,000 fine for committing violations under the CAN-SPAM Act, wire fraud and mail fraud.

Alan Ralsky and his son-in-law Scott Bradley were sentenced for hatching an illegal spamming plot which was designed with the intention of artificially inflating share prices and trading in them once their prices increased. Bradley was ordered three years in prison with a five year probation period.

According to the charge sheet, Ralsky and his "gang" members had sent spam emails to promote stocks of those US companies which were owned and controlled in China and Hong Kong and are rarely traded with.

The "crew" used to make cash whenever victims automatically inflated the share price when they bought the shares.

The members of the fraud ring used the wire communications, email and US postal services to run the spam scam simultaneously laundering millions of dollars which they used to generate.

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As it is widely known, the sentences were handed out after a three-year long investigation by the FBI, the IRS and U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Expressing his satisfaction at the development, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said in a statement that this indictment should be a warning to spammers who intend to perpetrate financial frauds by the way of spam emails.