Mega spammer Alan Ralsky has been indicted under Federal anti-spamming law, along with ten other spammers involved in Ralsky’s operation, including Ralsky’s own son-in-law, Scott Bradley (“Oh dad, how could you?) Other spammers charged include Judy Devenow, also of Michigan; James Bragg, of Arizona; California spammers John Brown, William Neil, Anki Neil, James Fite, Francis Tribble; and How Wai John Hui, of Vancouver, Canada and Hong Kong, and Peter Severa of Russia.

But by far the most high profile is Alan Ralsky – authorities estimate that Ralsky is responsible for pumping tens of millions of spam messages throughout the internet every day. As such, he has engendered a great deal of hostility, and has earned mention both in Spam Kings and Spam Wars.

Even Ralsky’s own attorney, Philip Kushner, can’t seem to quite bring himself to say with a straight face that Ralsky’s not a spammer, and he seems to understand the public’s disaffection with his client. “There’s a lot of people who are hostile to spam and I understand that,” said Kushner, “but it’s a separate question about whether he’s done anything illegal.”

The current charges against Ralsky, son-in-law Bradley, and the nine others include efforts to use botnets to send their spam, perpetrating a pump-and-dump spam scam for a worthless Chinese stock which, once inflated in value by their spam campaign Ralsky and the others quickly dumped, and falsifying header and other email information intended to disguise the origin of their spam.

The indictments are the result of a three-year cooperative investigation by the FBI, the IRS Investigation Unit, and the U.S. Postal Service.
he three-year investigation was handled by the FBI, U.S. Postal Service and IRS Crimiminal Investigation.