Billion-email spammer arrested

A man who has sent almost one billion spam messages has been arrested in New York for identity theft.

The case of the email marketer, known as "Buffalo Spammer", will be the state's first criminal case against a junk mailer.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said that his office brought four felony and two misdemeanour charges against Buffalo - aka New York, resident Howard Carmack - for alleged identity theft and forgery that allowed him to send more than 825 million email messages through internet service provider EarthLink.

Carmack is alleged to have opened more than 340 accounts with EarthLink using stolen credit cards and other false documentation, causing the ISP to lose in excess of $1m in network resources and bogus accounts.

Spitzer said that a recently enacted identity theft statute, as well as the cooperation of the FBI's Buffalo Cyber Task Force, the New York State Police and EarthLink during a yearlong investigation of Carmack, led to the arrest this week.

"Spam itself is not illegal. What makes this criminal conduct is the intersection of spamming...with forgery and identity theft," said Spitzer during a press conference call.

The criminal case against Carmack is the state's first under the identify theft statute, according to Spitzer. Not only does it allow the state to confront one of the fastest-growing areas of criminal conduct - identity theft - but it also "sends a message to others who are spamming," he said.