Vegas man pleads guilty in scam of 500000 Facebook accounts

A Nevada man pleaded guilty Monday to sending more than 27 million spam messages to Facebook users, federal officials said.

You may not be familiar with the name Sanford Wallace, but there’s a decent chance he’s sent you a message a time or two. Wallace further conceded his violation of a 2009 court order not to access Facebook’s computer network.

Although Zuckerberg & Co. never collected any money from him due to Wallace’s bankruptcy, the judge in the case strongly recommended that the tech giant pressed criminal charges. “He is now out on bail, with a $ 250, 000 dollar fine and is scheduled to be sentenced in December.” class=”local_link” target=”_blank”>Facebook users with over 27 million messages over a three-month period.

The complaint, filed in 2011, alleges that Wallace used an army of 500,000 compromised Facebook.com accounts to make an estimated 30 million unauthorized wall posts on the friends of those commandeered accounts.

Those who clicked on the link, thinking it came from a friend, were redirected to websites that paid Wallace for the Internet traffic. Wallace, now 47, plead guilty yesterday to using Facebook for mass spamming in 2008 and 2009. The deal, agreed to on Monday, sets December 7 as the date for sentencing.