New Yorker arrested for Instant Messaging Spam

History was made when an individual from New York, United States was charged for ‘spimming’, which is the act of sending unsolicited messages over instant messaging. This is the first instance of its kind in the whole world. The man in question is 18-year-old Anthony Greco who was arrested February 16 at Los Angeles International Airport. He was charged with sending over 1.5 million unsolicited messages to users around the world over instant messaging service.

These offenses are in direct violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act. Spim has been growing rapidly in the last few months and Greco’s case marked the first time authorities criminally charged anyone for this offense. Reports said that Greco started creating thousands of fraudulent accounts at MySpace.com in October 2004 and sent Spim messages from those accounts.

After the case was reported, both U.S. Secret Service and Los Angeles Police Department’s Electronic Crimes Task Force started their investigation and that led to the arrest of Greco. In fact, he contacted the IM Service (MySpace.com) asking for permission to send commercial email messages to all of the website’s users. However, when the service refused permissions, he threatened to use his spamming techniques for that purpose. As a result, he has also been charged with extortion and threatening to cause damage to MySpace.com’s computers.

If the offenses are proved in the courts, Anthony is practically looking at a maximum of 18 years of prison sentence!