One more of the Internet’s bad guys, or spam guys, is in the hands of the law. Sanford Wallace, a known spammer of over 27 million Facebook messages has surrendered on hacking charges. Wallace was actually indicted on July 6th but the announcement wasn’t released until yesterday.
Facebook stated on their blog:
“A federal grand jury in San Jose indicted Wallace with multiple counts of fraud for sending unwanted messages and Wall posts to people on Facebook. He now faces serious jail time for this illegal conduct. We applaud the efforts of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI to bring spammers to justice and will continue to pursue and support both civil and criminal consequences for spammers and others who attempt to harm Facebook or the people who use our service.”
Wallace was actually banned from Facebook in 2009 after a court awarded the company $711 in damages. But Wallace continued hacking away. He then allegedly acquired access to over 500,000 accounts and then used them to post on people’s walls, using the common but fake messages imploring a friend to sign up for some fake service.
Wallace now faces between 16 and 40 years in prison and pay up to $2 million in fines. He was released on $100,000 bond.
At least he can keep up with his Google Plus profile until the trial.