Facebook Spammer Taken To Court & To Face $873M Fine

Even though Facebook has billions of dollars in their bank account, Mark Zuckerberg will definitely be delighted when his Californian company wins an amazing $873 million judgement against Canadian Facebook user - Adam Guerbuez and his company Atlantis Blue Capital for sending more than 4 million bogus messages from members' profiles, of which many advertising male enhancement drugs.

Facebook sued Guerbuez in U.S. District Court for Northern California in August. "The voluminous and illicit nature of defendants' advertisements has tainted the Facebook experience for affected Facebook users," Facebook wrote in its initial complaint.

"Does Facebook expect to quickly collect $873 million and share the proceeds in some way with our users? Alas, no. It's unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can). But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users.

This judgment is the result of the tireless effort of our security experts, legal team and the other significant resources we've devoted to finding, exposing and prosecuting the sources of spam attacks. These efforts complement the sophisticated technical systems we continue to develop to limit the impact of these attacks or to block them altogether." wrote Max Kelly, Facebook's director of security.

This fine was the largest ever issued under the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2004.