Spam king facing criminal charges for Facebook spamming

Sanford “Spamford” Wallace has long been a thorn in the side of social networks and has already been successfully sued in civil court by the FCC, MySpace and Facebook.

The verdict in the Facebook case included an order for him to recompense the damages caused to the social network in the amount of $711 million – an amount that Facebook knows will never see.

At the time, the Facebook team announced that what it is really hoping for is to win a separate case – one that would see the spammer go to jail. And that time has perhaps finally come.

“On July 6, 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,” announced Facebook on its official blog, and added that Wallace has surrendered to FBI agents.

According to the indictment, he is facing multiple charges of fraud and related activity in connection with electronic mail, intentional damage to a protected computer and criminal contempt.

The criminal contempt charges have been raised because he set up a Facebook profile under a bogus names and logged into it, despite having been forbidden to do so by the verdict in the previous Facebook-instigated civil case.

If found guilty, Wallace could be looking at a massive prison sentence – each of the fraud counts could cost him three years in prison and $250,000 in fines, and the intentional damage counts even more: ten years in prison and the same amount in fines.

According to the Computerworld, he has been released on bail and is due to appear in court again on August 22.