RE: [Asrg] 0: General Spammer sentenced to 7 years in prison

["Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker at verisign.com>]

> Moving overseas provides questionable protection these days, unless
> you're really willing to move to some total anarchy or have enough
> money to afford an off-shore haven which I doubt these dirtbags can
> afford, that costs millions, those guys won't protect you out of
> principle.

> Also, I remember when the junk fax laws began taking effect. Junk
> faxes may still exist, but they quickly dropped by about 98%.

Law certainly discourages new entrants. Even though canspam does
not actually make spam illegal, it means that the number of people
giving it a try as an easy way to make money has dropped sharply.
The media is no longer pumping out stories that spam is an easy
way to make a killing like they were in 2001.

I doubt many criminal spammers will move offshore. Spam is usually
only one crime these guys are into. One well known notorious 
spammer is a small time drug dealer and money lauderer who runs
a girlie bar. During the dotcom boom he moved into online porn,
then when that market saturated and crashed he turned to spam 
as a way to keep people comming to his web site.

This guy is not going to move offshore to run his spam business
just because it is illegal. He is a hard core criminal.

Moving offshore has a huge cost for him, he would loose the
income from his strip club, the remaining parts of the porn site 
business. If as seems likely he is still involved in bigger
criminal activities he would loose out his share of those.

Spam may be profitable, I doubt it is anything like as profitable
as dealing in cocaine or laundering drug money. 


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