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:

Davidson’s body was found at his wife’s former home in Bennett, Colorado.

Davidson also shot and killed his wife along with his three-year-old daughter. His 7-month old son was found unharmed strapped in a baby seat of an SUV. Davidson’s 14-year old daughter was wounded in the neck but was able to run to a neighbor’s house for help.

His wounded daughter was able to tell police what had happened before being taken to the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver for treatment. The infant was taken to the Children’s Hospital in Aurora to be examined.

"What a nightmare, and such a coward," U.S. Attorney Troy Eid told the Rocky Mountain News. "Davidson imposed the death penalty on family members for his own crime."

Davidson, 35, was sentenced in April to serve 21 months in federal prison for his role in sending massive amounts of spam promoting penny stocks as good investments.

Davidson had become a "consultant" to the FBI investigating other spammers.

Davidson had served less than two months of his 21-month prison sentence when he escaped.
 

Edward "Eddie" Davidson, 35 was sentenced in April to 21 months in prison for sending massive amounts of unsolicited fraudulent emails promoting penny stocks as good investments.

Davidson was also ordered to pay $714,139 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and ordered to turn over gold coins and other property he purchased through his scheme.

He had been in the Florence, Colorado prison for about a month and a half when he escaped.

 According to local police, Davidson escaped when his wife came to visit him on Sunday. He got in the car and drove home and later left after changing his clothing.

U.S. Marshals are conducting a search for Davidson, with the FBI, IRS and the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force. A warrant for Davidson has also been issued.

Between 2002 and 2005, Davidson’s company, Power Promoters sent spam promoting watches, perfume and other products.

The email messages Davidson and his partners sent to hundreds of thousands of address contained false header information that hid the actual sender.  Davidson made more than $3.5 million in the scam.
 

Soloway, the so-called "King of Spam," pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and tax evasion on Friday.  In addition to jail time, he faces heavy fines, and having previously lost lawsuits filed by Microsoft and the owner of an Oklahoma ISP, it would appear the spammer’s nearing the end of his rope.

Mike Carter contributed to this image by reporting on the laughable state of Soloway’s finances.  "Soloway does not have a lot of assets for the government to seize.  Among the items [U.S. District Court Judge] Pechman will be asked to consider for forfeiture are Soloway’s collection of 24 pairs of sunglasses, valued at more than $3,700; 27 pairs of shoes, worth more than $7,400; and clothing worth about $14,200."

Sentencing should occur on June 20th, so we’ll have to wait a few months in order to see whether a handful of clothing or a solid third of Soloway’s life will be taken away.

If the second option becomes reality, we’re hoping some spammers will take it as a sign they should either retire or find a new profession.

Didn’t happen, says a Valleywag follow up:

Several reporters and spam fighters have checked on the Alan Ralsky story and told me it’s false. The FBI’s Detroit field office told one journalist that the Spam King was not arrested or held, is not in custody, and has not been indicted.

I wasn’t hoaxing (pretty sure my source wasn’t either), just running with a seemingly solid rumor. (Who hoaxes on a Friday?) Still looking into why I was told this story in the first place, and contacting my source. Will report back on whether someone in the spam world wanted to make everyone else duck, or whether a hacker got bored of running IE exploits and tipped another hacker with a faked caller ID.

Everyone can go back to guarding their inboxes. Next thing you know, someone will tell you that Nessie’s an elephant.

Oh, well, that’s just great.

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The Department of Justice detained the so-called “Spam King,” Alan Ralsky, and is pressuring him for information that could bring down a huge network of spammers. News of Ralsky’s arrest was quick to reach hacker networks and send them running for cover.

The details were leaked (poured) by tech-industry gossip site Valleywag on Friday. The news stayed quiet over the weekend, presumably because major news reporters are still trying to gather information and access Ralsky’s 72-hour sealed file.

From Valleywag’s scoop:

Valleywag: Tell me the scoop in three sentences.

MH: There is a risk of a huge network collapse in the hack scene. I couldn’t estimate since I don’t know who he has worked with, but it’s a lot of people. Think of a huge pyramid with him at the top. He is one of the few people that has knowledge of a large part of the hackscene network.

Word getting out to Ralsky’s partners in spam, and giving them time to get out of Dodge, was apparently not something the DOJ was happy about. An update from Valleywag suggests that the DOJ was shaking down informants:

Escher Auernheim: i just got a phonecall

Escher: and spammers are shutting their sh*t down
and ralsky has already plead down
and they cant get arrests from the info

Ralsky is a big enough fish in the spam world that information given to the DOJ could keep him out of bigger trouble, but it is still unknown what (if anything) he told investigators and how far reaching that information could be.

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