Alan Ralsky, the so-called "Godfather of spam" was yesterday sentenced by a federal judge in Detroit to spend the next 51 months of his life in prison for wire fraud, mail fraud, and violations of the CAN-SPAM act.

Not content simply to move boxes of pills or to sign people up for new mortgages, Ralsky's operation instead pulled in millions of dollars through "pump and dump" schemes of thinly traded stocks in companies you've never heard of. Millions of e-mails would announce some hot new "Internet IPO!!!!!" just about to drop, and—amazingly—some people would want in on the action. Since the stocks in question were low-volume "pink sheets" stocks, even low levels of activity could boost the stock price, at which point the owners would sell and forward tens of thousands of dollars from Hong Kong to the Standard Federal Bank in Troy, Michigan.

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