It’s a lot of money, an awful lot of money. Facebook is happy to win an $873 million judgment against spammer Adam Guerbuez and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital, for delivering over four million spam messages to the “walls” of Facebook users. It’s the largest award yet against a spammer.
Facebook wins $873 milion
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose signed the default judgment Friday. Facebook filed the lawsuit against Guerbuez, of Montreal, and his business, Atlantis Blue Capital, in August.
Palo Alto-based Facebook called the judgment the largest ever under a federal anti-spam law. Sam O’Rourke, senior counsel at the company, said it would serve as a deterrent to other spammers.
“We would like to have the message out there to spammers that we are not going to sit by and let them have that activity on our sites that is illegal and annoying to our users,” O’Rourke said.
In an e-mail statement, Facebook director of security Max Kelly and deputy general counsel Mark Howitson said:
“It’s unlikely that Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can). But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users.”
Guerbuez didn’t show up in court.
In May, MySpace won a $230-million default judgment against Sanford “Spamford” Wallace and a business partner. In June, it got a $6-million settlement from Scott Richter, whose company, Media Breakaway, allegedly sent unwanted ads to users.
January 12th, 2010
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