Spamming Is a Very Expensive Crime

Yahoo has won a $610 million judgment against the masterminds of an email-based lottery scheme. The spammers scammed Yahoo Mail customers into giving away their passwords, credit card information and even Social Security numbers. Some "winners" even sent the con artists money. After a three-year long legal battle to recover damages, the unnamed defendants now owe Yahoo an obscene amount of money, however the total is far from the biggest spamming judgment in internet history. Canadian superspammer Adam Guerbuez currently owes over (though he's vowed never to pay) $873 million for sending out over 4 million lewd Facebook messages. As these multi-million dollar spam settlements tend to find their way to bankruptcy court, it seems unlikely that Yahoo will ever see the money from their colossal court victory. But in the meantime, it's a great way to for the company to show off how aggressively its fighting its spam problem.