| Facebook gets $711 million in spam lawsuit |
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30/10/2009 12:15 (314 Day 03:33 minutes ago) | |||||
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The FINANCIAL -- Social networking website Facebook was awarded $711.2 million on October 30 in an anti-spam case against Internet marketer Sanford Wallace.
Facebook sued Wallace for accessing users' accounts without their permission and sending phony posts and messages, AP reported. The company said on its blog that in addition to the damage award, the San Jose, Calif., court referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney's office for prosecution for criminal contempt of court — meaning he could face jail time.
According to the same source, Wallace earned the monikers "Spam King" and "Spamford" as head of a company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s.
"The record demonstrates that Wallace willfully violated the statutes in question with blatant disregard for the rights of Facebook and the thousands of Facebook users whose accounts were compromised by his conduct," Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California wrote in his judgment order, which also permanently prohibits Wallace from accessing the Facebook Web site or creating a Facebook account, among other restrictions, Cnet News reported.
Facebook said the order should serve as a strong deterrent against spammers, the same source informs.
"While we don't expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent," Facebook said in a blog post, according to Reuters. Wallace did not immediately respond to a Reuters email seeking comment. His email address was obtained from the court documents.
The company said the judgment marks the second-largest anti-spam award ever, AP wrote. In November 2008, Facebook won an $873 million judgment against Adam Guerbuez and his business, Atlantis Blue Capital, who bombarded users with sexually explicit spam messages.
In May 2008, Wallace and another defendant were ordered to pay MySpace.com $234 million following a trial at which Wallace repeatedly failed to turn over documents or even show up in court, Cnet News reported.
Wallace has also been previously sued by the Federal Trade Commission and companies such as AOL and Concentric Network, according to the same source. In May 2006, Wallace and his company Smartbot.net were ordered by a federal court to turn over $4.1 million.
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