'Godfather of Spam' gets 4 years for $2.7 million fraud

DETROIT — A West Bloomfield, Mich., man dubbed by the feds as the "spam king" was sentenced Monday by a federal judge to more than four years for a stock-fraud scheme that netted him $2.7 million in the summer of 2005.

Alan Ralsky, 63, pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and to violating the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which bans misleading subject lines in e-mail and the sending of commercial e-mail messages that appear to be from friends.

An indictment charged that Ralsky, his son-in-law, Scott Bradley, and others used unsolicited e-mail to pump up the price of penny stock in Chinese companies to artificially high prices and then sold it. Bradley and two other men are being sentenced Monday afternoon.

They reaped huge profits for themselves, the indictment charged, and left Internet subscribers who purchased the stock holding the bag.

His operation illegally maximized the amount of spam that could be sent while evading spam-blocking devices and tricking recipients into opening and acting on advertisements, prosecutors said.

"With today's sentence of the self-proclaimed 'Godfather of Spam,' Alan Ralsky, and three others who played central roles in a complicated stock spam pump and dump scheme, the court has made it clear that advancing fraud through abuse of the Internet will lead to several years in prison," said U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg. "I commend the FBI, the Postal Inspection Service, and the IRS Criminal Investigative Division for their determined and careful investigation in this case which led to today's result."

Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.