When you give yourself the nickname "Spam King" and you get charged with spamming, you really have no option but to plead guilty. And that's how the situation with Sanford Wallace played out in court this week.
Wallace, 47, of Las Vegas pleaded guilty on Monday to charges of fraud and criminal contempt, admitting that he compromised the Facebook accounts of about 500,000 users and used them to send more than 27 million spam messages through the company's servers in 2008 and 2009, according to Bloomberg. Wallace also admitted that he violated a court order to not access the social network.
He was released on bond and is set to be sentenced on Dec. 7 in federal court in San Jose, Calif. He's facing up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
In 2011, Wallance turned himself in to the FBI after being indicted on charges of spamming Facebook users with millions of bogus messages.
The case dates back to 2009 when Facebook sued Wallace and two other spammers for phishing and spamming schemes that compromised many accounts. The social network obtained a restraining order in February 2009 and a $711 million judgment in October, the second-largest in history for an action brought under the federal CAN-SPAM Act. The case was then referred to the U.S. Attorney's office for possible criminal charges, which resulted in the 2011 indictment.
In 2009, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel ordered Wallace not to access Facebook, but the spammer violated that order by logging in to the site during an April 2009 Virgin Airlines flight from Las Vegas to New York. Wallace also maintained a Facebook profile for a "David Sinful-Saturdays Fredericks" in January and February 2011.