FBI puts stop to spam king

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://www.detnews.com/2005/technology/0510/16/B01-349738.htm
 
Sunday, October 16, 2005 

FBI puts stop to spam king

Agents close up shop by seizing equipment from bulk e-mailer's W. Bloomfield
home in recent raid.

By Joel Kurth and David Shepardson / The Detroit News 

Michigan's unapologetic king of bulk e-mail is in trouble again. This time,
an FBI raid has closed what some consider one of the world's largest houses
of spam. 

Warrants unsealed last week revealed that agents in September seized
computers, laptops, financial records and disks from the 8,000-square-foot
home of Alan M. Ralsky. The $750,000 West Bloomfield mini-mansion was built
off profits from the 100 million electronic offers for everything from Botox
to mortgages that Ralsky sends every day. 

FBI agents even took a copy of a 2002 Detroit News story that called Ralsky
the "poster boy for spam." 

"We're out of business at this point in time," Ralsky said last week. "They
didn't shut us down. They took all our equipment, which had the effect of
shutting us down." 

The raid is the latest episode in a cat-and-mouse game between anti-spammers
and Ralsky, 60, a gregarious, heavy-smoking ex-convict considered Public
Enemy No. 1 in some pockets of the Internet. 

...
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