How Much Money Do Spammers Make?

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How Much Money Do Spammers Make?

	By John Levine Author, Consultant & Speaker
	June 08, 2006 Views: 18,799 Comments: 1

News reports say that high profile Ryan Pitylak was fined $10 million by the Texas Attorney General. A few days ago, he paid a $1M settlement to Microsoft. Since it had been widely reported that he’d made between $3M and $4M during his spamming career, that seemed like a pretty good deal for him. As I commented to the San Antonio Express, this new fine is more in line with what he did, and at least relieves him of all his ill-gotten gains.

One of the unfortunate realities of spam is that if you have no morals and are willing to take the legal risks, you can make a whole lot of money quickly, much more than spammers could make otherwise. Jeremy Jaynes, the spammer who Virginia and AOL put in jail, made over $10M from bogus Federal Express refund kits. From what I saw of him at the trial, it was hard to imagine him making significant money legitimately.

The positive news here is that the law is able to go after big spammers where it hurts, in the wallet. But the bad news is that the mechanism for doing so is cumbersome, and only is workable against to the largest spammers. At the moment, there are enough big spammers that they’re the main targets, but for a thousand spammers making $100K apiece, the enforcement won’t work.

By John Levine, Author, Consultant & Speaker

Filed Under

Spam

Comments

Alice – Dec 30, 2006 7:52 PM

“This has been a real good learning experience for me,” he told the San Antonio Express. “The settlement has been a bit harsh but I’m happy to move on with my life.”

He’s says harsh? Dosen’t seem to have a problem paying the fine. Guess it was harsh but still profitable.

I say Chicken Poop add some jail time.
tRucks

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