FBI puts stop to spam king - 10/16/05: "FBI puts stop to spam king

Agents close up shop by seizing equipment from bulk e-mailer's W. Bloomfield home in recent raid.

By Joel Kurth and David Shepardson / The Detroit News

Expensive spam

Unwanted commercial e-mail isn't only annoying; it's become a drain on businesses, according to several studies. A February report by the University of Maryland claims it costs the national economy $22 billion a year in lost productivity. Earlier studies pegged it at $9 billion. Either way, about 40 percent of all e-mail is unwanted, according to Brightmail Inc., an anti-spam software maker.

Michigan's unapologetic king of bulk e-mail is in trouble again. This time, an FBI raid has closed what some consider one of the world's largest houses of spam.

Warrants unsealed last week revealed that agents in September seized computers, laptops, financial records and disks from the 8,000-square-foot home of Alan M. Ralsky. The $750,000 West Bloomfield mini-mansion was built off profits from the 100 million electronic offers for everything from Botox to mortgages that Ralsky sends every day.

FBI agents even took a copy of a 2002 Detroit News story that called Ralsky the 'poster boy for spam.'

'We're out of business at this point in time,' Ralsky said last week. 'They didn't shut us down. They took all our equipment, which had the effect of shutting us down.'

The raid is the latest episode in a cat-and-mouse game between anti-spammers and Ralsky, 60, a gregarious, heavy-smoking ex-convict considered Public Enemy No. 1 in some pockets of the Internet."