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Man allegedly responsible for a third of your spam e-mail arraigned
[Updated at 11:00 p.m.] Oleg Nikolaenko, a Russian man the FBI believes has been responsible for one-third of the spam in your inbox, pleaded not guilty Friday in federal court in Wisconsin.
[Posted at 10:20 a.m.] A Russian man the FBI believes has been responsible for one-third of the spam you get in your inbox is scheduled to be arraigned in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, court Monday.
According to court documents and FBI affidavits, researchers began tracking down the "Mega-D" spam automated botnet as a prime source of selling counterfeit goods, and the mastermind of it all is Oleg Nikolaenko.
"'Mega-D" was likely the largest botnet in the world, accounting for 32% of all spam," the court documents said. "Security researchers estimated that the botnet was capable of sending ten billion spam email messages a day.”
The documents show the scope of the counterfeit ring and the authorities' attempts to track down Nikolaenko.
A glimpse into how much Nikolaenko's operation may have made can be seen in court documents that allege that he received a payment of $459,098.47 between June 4 and December 5, 2007, resulting from e-mails for those peddling everything from advertised erectile dysfunction drugs, other counterfeit prescriptions, "herbal remedies" and even fake Rolex watches.
A break in finding the alleged mastermind was one of those watches. The path to Nikolaenko began when a seller of counterfeit Rolexes told authorities after he was arrested that he paid more than $2 million working with spammers to sell his product. He gave them information that resulted in a trail of information that led officials across several continents, to different e-mail addresses and websites and, eventually, back to Nikolaenko.
FBI agents and the Federal Trade Commission had been monitoring him since at least 2007, according to documents. That included two trips to the U.S. last year. And their big nab came when he went to Las Vegas, Nevada, for an auto show. He was arrested on November 4.
Christopher Van Wagner, Nikolaenko's lawyer, could not be reached immediately for comment. But he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that so far, the charges against his client are only accusations.
"We're prepared to present a rigorous defense," he said.
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I don't seem to be getting 32 percent less spam
Just b/c he was arrested doesn't mean the botnet suddenly stops lol...
rofl. The bots are automated. And they could anywhere in the world on any computer in the world.
His design wasn't to infect computers and create a botnet, it was to take computers that are already botted and use them as spam relays. This guy is the fall guy for the Russian mafia hacker team responsible for infecting all the computers. When he was arrested, the networks were immediately abused by the next would-be fall guy. Who cares about 2 years in jail when you have 2 million in the bank...
The bots are somewhat automated, but you need an end user to publish and update the spam. That's all this tools job was. Moreover, it's not too hard to make someone look like the suspect in this crime. Western Europe is reknown for jumping the gun on prosecution.
dam, somehow I must be getting your share. It's just not fair. And I don't eat any potted meat products, either.
Man, I bought that stuff, too. You mean it's not real?
It's a sham. Most spam today seems to originate in China.
I love Michal's comment. lol.
This is Homer Simpson, aka Happy Dude. The court is making me call everybody back and apologize for my telemarketing scam. I'm sorry. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send one dollar to Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. You have the power.
this is true
death penalty worthy. if they have to keep him alive he should be in prison for life and be fed nothing but cold SPAM.
No, no, Spam is too good for him...put him on the Disneyland ride "It's a small world after all" for life!!!!
@juvi I can just see a family having to wait to get on the boat after this guy's as he cruises on past in Hannibal Lector style restraints, sweaty and with bloodshot eyes.
Put him in prison for life. Only food he will have is Spam 🙂
LOL can of SPAMm funny.
Chop his penis off and spam everyone a picture of it. Next day, check your inbox for spam. You'd be amazed.
@Tyler That would be cruel and unusual. Lol
Okay, seriously, I am not in any way a fan of spam, but the death penalty? Come on. Oooo he sent out junk email, so we should fricking kill him?
Does this mean we can off the people leaving fliers in my mailbox every day?
@John Yes.
@juvi – you are a cruel, cruel person. I took my kids through that thing and I STILL can't get the song out of my head!
Please, please let this poor guy go. And make sure to let all of know when and where he is being released.
Bring your baseball bats, it's the American Way.
His body will be found hanging from the side of an Armour meat-packing plant.
Cause of death: asphyxiation caused by his throat being stuffed with SPAM.
Somebody needs to watch the movie The Oxbow Incident to see how fair American mob justice is.
American justice. You need to rethink that. Call it world justice. There is a lot more people beat outside of America to death by a mob.
How many of us out there have wanted to get our hands on this guy and others like him?
Torture him to death!
Yes, make him eat dinner with Dick Cheney every day for the rest of his life.
... or at least go hunting with him
I find it difficult to imagine one person being responsible for 1/3 of the SPAM messages on the net. In any event, this person is garbage. Remove his skin one square inch at a time, pour iodine all over him and then scrub the iodine stains off with a wire brush.
So far, I like this one best.
I would volunteer to donate blood just to keep him alive and make your procedure last longer.
It's not like this one guy is sitting at his computer sending those out. He used a botnet to handle all of the messages. Likely you clicked on a link in some email, it installed malware or a trojan and your computer contributed to this epidemic. So you are probably some to blame as well 🙂
I agree with bodie..
If ppl wouldnt be too stupid to click on those links anywhere in the web, we wouldnt have such problem.
What is wrong with you he sent out mail it's peoples fault if they were dumn enough to buy into it.
Ha ha, I can't wait until he is "amazed by the size" of his cellmates tool.
I am always amazed by this type of post.
I didn't realize so many guys suffer from the "small penis syndrome!"
Cliff – Obviously you didn't get the joke. He was mocking the common viagra SPAM message that this guy was most likely responsible for.
Usually it's the one's who claim someone else has a small penis are the ones with small penises.
he should have to pay the people he scammed back be strung up like a pinata and we should let a small army of children at him with sticks
Who actually responds to spam? How can they make money? Who would buy a drug or a watch from an email that has grave spelling and grammatical errors? Anyone responding to spam should be checked for mental issues. No market, no spammy.
P.T. Barnum was right, though. If only a small fraction of one percent of Spam emails result in sales, that's still a lot of money. And, given the results of any election over the last 10 or so years, it's obvious that more than a small fraction of our population will fall for pretty much anything.
It's a "Stupidity Tax".
If you send out a million emails at an aggregate cost of $0.08 and manage to "sell" just one $50 item, you have made a profit of $49.92. Not too shabby for doing next to nothing.
Beef, I was just thinking the same exact thing!!!! Lol !
hey beef, aren't you reading all the irate posters here?
Guess what? they fell for it.
All sadists wanting to cut off his penis must've ordered the penis enlarging gadget or pills and now are still called shorty and with less money.
just don't click the advertisments. Let he stupid people throw their cash away and the smart people prosper.
That's why we have "income disparity." It's the nature of capitalism. Don't be too successful, though, or they'll tax it away and give it back to the fools again.
I haven't exacly "prospered" with the time I spend filtering SPAM.
Never-EVER trust a Russian. What's this guys email address? I've got some email for him-lol.
Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga would not exist without someone trusting a Russian.
And your point is??? those websites are a waste of brain cells.
Aww.. my husband is Russian! That isn't very nice! haha
NOW where am I going to get a vastly over-priced rolex clone that promptly breaks after a few days???
The death penalty would be too kind. Feed him slowly into a meat grinder, feet first, while giving him a transfusion of pigs blood would be more appropriate.
Eastern Europeans and Russians, having been living under a corrupt communist system for so long are as corrupt as they ever were. Ebay sellers won't generally deal with them. I love it when Americans are shocked by this, Westerners are "babes in the woods" when it comes to the sheer corruption that is the rule in the rest of the World. Look at Afghanistan.
This reminds me of the the guy who worked at a pickle packing company.
he was arrested for puting his penis in the pickle slicer.
In court the company presented their main witness.
They asked her name and what she did at the company?
She said "my name is Jane and I'm the pickle slicer."
Why do many hateful comments towards the wrong guy?
If spam becomes unprofitable, it would seize to exist tomorrow, as its quite a pricey enterprise to pay for those bulletproof servers in la-la land data centers. You read it yourself: "he received a payment of $459,098.47 between June 4 and December 5, 2007". That means someone out there is actually purchasing this crap. Hate those who ACT ON SPAM.
But something clearly doesn't make sense. For a spammer responsible for 1/3 of spam and collecting only half a million?? The math is off. This guy should have been in a yacht on a Riviera. And for the biggest guy in spam business he won't even be able to afford to buy a decent apartment in Moscow...
It didn't say that was ALL he received. That's probably a single payment, from a singler client. Given that he's pushing everything from fake Viagra to fake Rolexes, how many other payments did he get that were not reported? What amazes me is that they were able to catch this guy and actually bring him to justice.
"If spam becomes unprofitable, it would seize to exist tomorrow, as its quite a pricey enterprise to pay for those bulletproof servers in la-la land data centers."
Try reading the article. He obviously wasn't just running a big data center in Russia, since if he was, either the Russians would have shut him down, or all our ISPs would have just blacklisted his servers and refused any mail that looked like it came from him.
Instead, he operated a 'botnet'. The basic idea is you take control of other people's computers with viruses, then use those computers to send your spam emails. It doesn't matter if they're not "bulletproof", or get blocked eventually; you have millions of them, and there are always more suckers who will download unsafe things and get infected. Low overhead for him. Of course, now he's likely to also be hit with computer fraud and theft of services, so... he's probably not going anywhere for a while.
"But something clearly doesn't make sense. For a spammer responsible for 1/3 of spam and collecting only half a million?? The math is off."
He made nearly $500K in 6 months, and that was just one payment. I'd say he was doing alright.
that explains how there people with such expensive cars in russia
Yes, blame the victims. Sheesh.
Sorry for all the typos above.
Know porblem.
@ BPG
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