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After Faceboook’s victory against the self-proclaimed “Spam King” Sanford Wallace, yet another hurrah may be in order in as far as bringing spammers to justice is concerned. A man from Detroit was recently sentenced to 4 years in prison for spamming.

Alan Ralsky of Oakland County is described as “one of the world’s most prolific senders of spam e-mail.”  He claims to be the “Godfather of Spam,” according to CNN Money. Ralsky was accused of being part of a stock fraud scheme in 2005 that reportedly earned for him a hefty $ 2.7 million. The scheme allegedly involved the sending of million of unsolicited e-mails in an effort to influence Chinese stock prices. Ralsky reportedly acknowledged the allegations.

The 51-month prison sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani; on top of the prison sentence, Ralsky also will reportedly face five years probation and forfeit $250,000 that was seized from him by the government two years ago.

Sentenced along with Ralsky were his alleged cohorts, who included his son-in-law Scott Bradley and two others. Bradley was sentenced to 40 months in prison and five years probation.

Ralsky’s spamming history reportedly dates back to 1997, at a time when there was no law in place yet regarding e-mail marketers. Before that law was passed in 2003, Ralsky was reportedly sending as many as seventy million messages daily using fake names.

The charges that were levied against Ralsky and his buddies were for “conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, which violated the CAN-SPAM Act. The Act considers the sending of commercial e-mail in huge numbers from an unauthorized source as a criminal violation. They were basically accused of “committing wire fraud and engaging in money laundering”.

Also sentenced were Hong Kong and Canada resident How Wai John Hui, CEO of China World Trade, and John Bown.

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