Federal authorities in New Orleans have indicted a Brazilian man on charges he was planning to sell a botnet he created to a Dutch spammer. Prosecutors say 35 year old Leni de Abreu Neto created a botnet of over 100,000 compromised computers and was in negotiations to sell it to Nordin Nasari of The Netherlands, a spammer who wrote the virus Neto used to take control of the computers in his botnet. Nasari agreed to purchase the entire operation for $36,800. While Nasari s being prosecuted by Dutch authorities, Neto faces charges here in the U.S. and is facing up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to a half million dollars.

This is just the latest example of how the underworld of hacking and spamming has gone from groups of curious kids who hacked into systems just to see how they worked and meant no harm, to groups of people selling quack cures and bogus goods in the hope of making a quick buck, to a thriving underground economy that generates millions a year, most of it through phishing and the sales and leases of botnets and malicious software. This is uncharted territory for most law enforcement and it will be interesting to see what they come up with to fight a whole new world of crime.