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Authorities in Spain have arrested a Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world's most notorious spam kingpins.
Spanish police arrested Pyotr Levashov under an international warrant executed in the city of Barcelona, according to Reuters. Russian state-run television station RT (formerly Russia Today) reported that Levashov was arrested while vacationing in Spain with his family.
[...] Levashov is currently listed as #7 in the the world's Top 10 Worst Spammers list maintained by anti-spam group Spamhaus. The U.S. Justice Department maintains that Severa was the Russian partner of Alan Ralsky, a convicted American spammer who specialized in "pump-and-dump" spam schemes designed to artificially inflate the value of penny stocks.
[...] There is ample evidence that Severa is the cybercriminal behind the Waledac spam botnet, a spam engine that for several years infected between 70,000 and 90,000 computers and was capable of sending approximately 1.5 billion spam messages a day.
Alleged Spam King Pyotr Levashov Arrested
Fake News at Work in Spam Kingpin's Arrest?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:42PM (8 children)
"executed in the city of Barcelona"
Alright - they saved the cost of a trial.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:43PM (7 children)
Given people's feelings towards spam, I'm not certain there'd be too much complaint over this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @02:36PM (2 children)
Indeed. Personally I have not an ounce of pity for this crook. I assume his family was put to death as well?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @07:57PM (1 child)
Not without torturing them, I hope. We have to beat the savages.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 13 2017, @09:21PM
SOP calls for making them kill him, I believe. They have been profiting from his evil.
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Thursday April 13 2017, @06:02PM (2 children)
The guy should be treated as a murderer he's worse than. People are irrational and fail to combine many small incidents when comparing with big rare ones: they for example fear flying despite cars being 75 times more deadly per mile travelled, and 73 times per person.
Let's assume 95% spam filtering rate, and 1 second wasted per spam (gross underestimation as while deleting a batch is faster, context switch to recognize and delete a spam mail is far longer). To deprive people of a year of life, the spam campaign would need to send mere 630M mails. That's what I assume a professional spammer does per day. And not all time is equal: spam makes you lose productive time (work mail) or leisure time (private mail), while a good part of time lost to a murder would be sleeping or as a mindless dementia sufferer that makes your grandkids quietly wish you were already gone.
Thus, hang this fucker high! Oh wait, Spain lacks the death penalty. So at least isolate the bastard, at taxpayer cost, for the rest of his scummy life.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @08:39PM
How many people wasted 3 minutes reading your post? Think of the cost! Think of the loss of ??? productivity ??? (fill in later) It's astonishing. For that, we demand an eye for an eye. 3 minutes x 27 people who read SN = 78 minutes hard labor for you. Followed by a death sentence obviously cuz were tots sirious.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday April 14 2017, @06:59AM
So, death by a trillion paper cuts it is...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 14 2017, @03:31AM
It's always fascinating to see people advocating the death penalty for spammers.
You're more likely to get the death penalty for leaking.
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