A notorious hacker who ran an underground site that was a popular hangout spot for hackers, carders, scammers, spammers, and other cybercriminals was slammed with a 13 year prison sentence for his part in a series of credit card scams that cost the US $86 million.

Max Ray Vision was also ordered to pay over $27 million in restitution. He ran CardersMarket, a forum where cybercriminals bought and sold malware and stolen card numbers, swapped war stories and socialized. His crimes, which included harvesting stolen banking and credit card information, came to a halt after the Secret Service infiltrated the site. When arrested he had near 2 million stolen credit card numbers in his possession.

Vision was facing a life sentence but it was reduced due to his cooperation with authorities. It won’t be his first time-in 2001 he spent 18 months in jail for participating in a scripting attack against the Pentagon.

Alan Ralsky, dubbed the “Godfather of Spam” has been sentenced to 4 years in prison by a federal judge. Ralsky was convicted of conspiring to commit wire and mail fraud, violating the CAN-SPAM Act, wire fraud, and money laundering. He was the ringleader of a spam ring that raked in millions off of a “pump and dump” scam featuring Chinese penny stocks. He sent billons of spam messages promoting the penny stocks.

The scam works by tricking people into buying what they think is a hot stock, thereby artificially inflating its worth. The scammers then cash in and disappear, leaving their victims holding worthless stock and having lost hundreds to thousands of dollars.

“With today’s sentence of the self-proclaimed ‘Godfather of Spam’, Alan Ralsky, and three others who played central roles in a complicated stock spam pump- and-dump scheme, the court has made it clear that advancing fraud through the abuse of the Internet will lead to several years in prison,” said U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg, in a statement on Monday.

Ralsky’s partners will also see jail time. His son-in-law Scott Bradly was sentenced to 40  months in prison and 5 years probation while How Wai John Hui, a Hong Kong resident who served as the dealmaker for the companies whose stocks were being hawked, got 4 years in prison and 3 years probation. Ralsky’s third partner, John Bown, will be spending 32 months in prison and 3 years on probation.

In addition to his prison time, Ralsky will also be put on 5 years probation and have to forfeit $250,000 seized by the government.

There are 7 others involved in the scam awaiting sentencing.

Facebook announced on Thursday that it has won its lawsuit against notorious spammer Sanford Wallace. A judge in San Jose, CA awarded the site a $711 million judgement, the second largest in history to be awarded under the CAN-SPAM Act.

“While we don’t expect to quickly collect the full amount, we’ll work hard to get everything we can,” Simon Axten, a privacy and public policy associate at Facebook, said in a statement.

The suit was filed in February and accused Wallace and his accomplices Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw of running a spamming and phishing scheme on the site. The trio sent messages to Facebook members that contained links leading to malicious sites that stole their login info. They used that info to spam everyone on the compromised account’s friends list. In addition to the hefty judgement the three spammers face possible prison sentences.

Wallace is no stranger to the legal system. MySpace won a $234 million judgement against him last year and in the last decade he has been sued by AOL, CompuServe, Earthlink and many other ISPs. He usually ignores the suits and refuses to show up in court. Earlier this year he filed for bankruptcy to avoid MySpace’s attempts to collect their judgement.

A Michigan man faces up to 3.5 years in prison for his part in a penny stock spam scheme that involved the sending of millions of emails.  63-year-old Alan Ralsky and his son-in-law Scott Bradley faced a 41 count indictent under the CAN-SPAM Act. Ralsky also pleaded guilty to stock fraud and money laundering.

          “Alan Ralsky was at one time the world’s most notorious illegal spammer,” U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg said after the plea. “Today Ralsky, his son-in-law Scott Bradley, and three of their co-conspirators stand convicted for their roles in running an international spamming operation that sent billions of illegal e-mail advertisements to pump up Chinese ‘penny’ stocks and then reap profits by causing trades in these same stocks while others bought at the inflated prices.”

The pair and nine others operated a penny stock pump and dump scheme. They sent out unsolicited emails to millions hyping a worthless Chinese penny stock. When unsuspecting victims fell for the come ons and bought shares, it artificially inflated the stock’s worth. Ralsky and the others then sold their shares for huge profits and left their victims hanging.

They used forged headers, proxy computers and domains registered under fake names to send their spam without being detected. Prosecutors plan to recommend 35 to 43 months in prison, a term Ralsky agreed to as part of his plea deal. The deal also includes a fine of up to $1 million and an agreement on Ralsky’s part to assist government in future investigations.

Former Senator Bill Bradley sits on the board of a company called QuinStreet, which has been identified as a major spammer. It labels itself as a leading “vertical marketer” but experts say that’s frequently a code word for spamming. QuinStreet’s clients include trade school DeVry, several dating websites, and credit card and gaming companies.

          “There’s a class of company called ‘affiliates,’ and they’re basically organizations that send spam for some other company that holds the product,” said Adam O’Donnell, Director of Emerging Technologies at Cloudmark Inc., an Internet security firm. “Think of it as a third-party marketing firm that does the dirty work of sending spam.”

The company has been the target of many complaints about its allegedly aggressive spamming activities, both under the QuinStreet name and under aliases such as VendorSeek, and it’s likely they could be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act as some of the complaints say the company refused to stop sending junk mail even after they clicked the opt out link.

While companies like QuinStreet try to hide their spamming behind affiliates and shell companies, the fact remains that spamming is spamming and the CAN-SPAM Act isn’t to be taken lightly. It carries an $11,o00 fine per offense. Before you begin any kind of email marketing plan, review the law with your legal department and make sure your company is following it to the letter!