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Facebook Wins $873 Million From Spammer

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.

Allegedly Guerbuez, from Montreal, Canada (his company is registered in Panama) was able to achieve his ends by stealing Facebook logon details with phishing messages and creating an army of botnets to post messages so they appeared to come from friends, according to Information Week.

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.

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