SC Magazine, UK
July 26 2005
Unbeatable spammer takes beating, dies
by David Quainton
[Tue, Jul 26, 2005] Spam behemoth Vardan Kushnir has emailed his last
Russian after being bludgeoned to death on Sunday.
According to Russian news agency Interfax, the 35-year-old Armenian
was found dead in his apartment in Moscow, after apparently suffering
numerous blows to the head. His death brings to an end the career of
one of the world’s most prolific and committed spammers.
Kushnir waged a spam campaign from his company the American Language
Center (ALC), an English language school in Moscow. Although it
operated a website, it was often taken down by anti-spam forces, so
generally the emails asked users to call its phonelines.
“A huge amount of spam was (and is still being) sent to over 20
million email addresses belonging to Russian-speaking people,” said
Mikko Hyponnen director of antivirus research, F-Secure. “They say
that you can hardly find a Russian who has never received a spam
advertising the ALC.”
As a result of his efforts Russians were understandably annoyed and
launched their own anti-spam campaign against Kushnir. Users of
forums were encouraged to call his offices and disrupt phone lines.
ALC numbers were frequently found on call-girl cards in an attempt to
inconvenience Kushnir. A murder case has been opened by Moscow
police, who are still working out a motive for the attack.
“It will be interesting to see how this will affect spam volumes from
Russia in general. Other spammers must be scared now,” added
Hyponnen.
In November 2003 ALC was investigated by the Russian Anti-Monopoly
Committee but no legal case against the company was formed.
Earlier this month SC reported another of the world’s most notorious
spammers had decided to turn his back on spam. Self-d spam-king Scott
Richter has been spam free for over six months.