The lawsuit itself is likely to succeed and is likely to do little to prevent Wallace from repeating. Wallace began his spam career well before email, when fax machines were the electronic communication devices of choice. In 1997, the FTC fined Wallace $4 million for his company Cyber Promotions’ spamming and drive-by adware installation offenses.

In 2004, the FTC sued again for spyware violations, and Wallace and codefendants were fined over $5 million. In 2007, MySpace was awarded nearly a quarter of a billion dollars after a court found Wallace liable for automating 11,000 MySpace profiles to drive traffic to gambling and porn sites.

And now Facebook is after him. So that means, what, exactly? Well, one assumes they (well, somebody) will have to find him. Wikipedia says his last residence was Las Vegas, but he has a habit of skipping out on payment and skipping town, only to start some new shady spam venture.

Facebook is trying to prosecute under the CAN-SPAM Act, but it is unclear if those charges will stick because of the law technically pertains to email, not social networks. Hopefully, something sometime will stick this guy, as he is the equivalent of a public pariah, a flasher on a crowded street.

I don’t know if Wallace has paid previous fines, but his continued persistence in innovating ways to spam netizens proves the spam business is a lucrative one. The youngster who hacked Miley Cyrus’s and other celebrity email accounts, Josh Holly, revealed he and an Israeli accomplice were paid $110,000 in advertising affiliate fees to perpetrate their scam.

It seems the only resort for justice will be aggressive prosecution, jail time and asset seizure for cybercrooks. Like before criminal penalties were levied on insider traders, governmental fines are low enough that they become a cost of doing business. Massive civil awards are simply ignored and defendants skip town.

Now he is back in the news getting sued by MySpace rival Facebook. Inside Facebook reports:

Three months after being awarded $873 million in a lawsuit against Atlantis Blue Capital for violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, Facebook earlier this week filed a federal complaint against “Spam King” Sanford Wallace in San Jose District Court. Las Vegas night club manager Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw are also named as defendants in the suit…

Arzoomanian (or someone using his identity) seems to have appeared on the spamming scene more recently. In November 2008, a careful Facebook user blogged about a password harvesting scam he discovered by someone using domains registered to Arzoomanian’s name.

Wallace has quite the track record of lawsuits. besides MySpace, he has been sued by AOL, Concentric Network, CompuServe, and even the Federal Trade Commission, for which he paid $4 million. He has earned the nick name "spam king."

Speaking of spam lawsuits involving the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC sued Impulse Media Group for spam that was sent via its affiliates. The case went to jury and found that Impulse Media should not be held liable. This case is discussed by a couple of lawyers in this interesting video from the SMX West show:

The social networking site won a legal judgment against Wallace after he ignored requests to hand over documents and failed to appear in court.

MySpace filed the suit in March of last year alleging that beginning in October 2006 Wallace carried out a phishing scheme to falsely gain access to MySpace user profiles. Wallace created profiles, groups, and forums on the site to lead users through deceptive means to Web sites operated by Wallace.

In addition he spammed thousands of users with unwanted advertisements that promoted his Web sites.

Wallace has been sued before by AOL, Concentric Network Corp., CompuServe, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In 2006 Wallace was ordered to pay more than $4 million in a lawsuit brought by the FTC for the actions of his company Smartbot.net.

"Individuals who try to spam or phish our members are not welcome on MySpace," said Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace.

"We will continue to aggressively protect our members through a combination of legal action, law enforcement pursuit, and technological enhancements."