So it's the end of the road for Alan Ralsky, the so-called Spam King.

Ralsky, his son in law and three others have pleaded guilty to offences under the Can-Spam act and Ralsky is facing up to six years in prison and a million dollar fine. I only hope he doesn't regret sending all those penis enlargement adverts...

One of the interesting facets of the case is that the feds got him for carrying out pump and dump scams, rather than just for sending regular spam. He'd send out millions of spams promoting a penny stock, credulous fools would rush to buy it and the owner could see huge profits when they sold.

Ralsky has long been the scourge of the industry but the good folks at Spamhaus say he's been less active of late. Now he's gone completely, others will no doubt pick up the slack, but it appears that they too might have problems because I suspect that Ralsky will sing like a canary to cut his time in prison.

How much help he will be is another matter. I'm sure the Feds know how the business works already so he'll have to name some names to get a reduction in his sentence.

However, the news does give me a chance to reprise my favourite Ralsky story. He gave an interview to the Detroit News in which he boasted about his new home, built on the proceeds of spam.

However, the article contained enough clues about his location to allow enterprising geeks to find his address and Slashdot it. Before long he was drowning in a tide of junk mail, introductory offers and trial magazine subscriptions.

The volume of mail was such that he was getting four or five sacks of the stuff a day, not to mention lawn sets and other sundry items. Ralsky discovered that finding legitimate mail was impossible in the morass of junk, and vocally complained about the problems he was facing.

Somewhere out there the world's smallest violin started playing...