MySpace launched a lawsuit in March 2007 against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines alleging the pair had sent 735,925 junk messages to its members with unwanted advertisements luring them to external websites.

The judgement, thought to be the largest ever given against senders of spam, was awarded after Wallace and Rines failed to show up in court.

Wallace earned the nickname 'Spam King' after being accused of sending as many as 30 million junk emails a day in the Nineties. In May 2006, Wallace and his company Smartbot.net were ordered to pay out more than $4m by a federal court in the US.

"It would be great to think that this is the last we will see of 'Spamford' Wallace's internet activities, but I don't have much hope that even with this colossal fine he will be able to resist abusing innocent net users again," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.

"What is galling, however, is that these two spammers are just the tip of an iceberg. Even if MySpace were to extricate the fine from these two men - which seems unlikely given their past record - there will be plenty more cybercriminals trying to make money from junk email."

www.myspace.com

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