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The online social networking site MySpace has won $230 million in the lawsuit against two notorious spammers, Stanfors Wallace and Walter Rines, although the chances to actually get the money are close to zero. The ruling was made in the absence of the two spammers, and represents the largest sum of money ever awarded in an anti-spam process.

“MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site,” MySpace’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, told the Associated Press. “We remain committed to punishing those who violate the law and try to harm our members.”

“Spam King” Sanford Wallace first became known in the 1990s, when his company, Cyber Promotions, became widely known for sending millions of e-mails a day as part of its marketing strategy. In 2007, MySpace filed a lawsuit against him for phishing and spamming.

MySpace is just one of the several companies that have taken legal actions against Wallace, or his former company, however, it is for the first time that an anti-spamming case ended with such a large award.

“Anyone who’s been thinking about engaging in spam is going to say, ‘Wow, I better not go there,” Nigam also told AP. “Spammers don’t want to be prosecuted. They are there to make money. It’s our job to send a message to stop them.”

Wallace and Rines reportedly sent 730,000 messages to MySpace members, either from fake or stolen accounts, and made them look like they were from friends. The messages asked them to check a link to a website, and according to user complaints, most of the times they contained adult material, which was a clear threat to teens who use MySpace, the company said.

Unfortunately, the chances to find the spammers and make them pay are minimal. Wallace was last seen working in a Las Vegas casino.

“The giant judgments are all defaults, which means they don’t necessarily even know how to find the spammer,” AP quoted John Levine of the anti-spam advocacy group Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email as saying.

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