Former spammer: 'I know I'm going to hell'
"Ed," a retired spammer, built a considerable fortune sending e-mails that promoted pills, porn and casinos. At the peak of his power, Ed says he pulled in $10,000 to $15,000 a week, storing the money in $20 bills in stacks of boxes.
It was a life of greed and excess, one that preyed especially on vulnerable people hoping to score drugs or win money gambling on the Internet. From when he was expelled from high school at 17 until he quit his spam career at 22, Ed -- who does not reveal his full name but sometimes goes by Spammer-X -- was part of an electronic underworld profiting from the Internet via unsolicited commercial e-mails.
"Yes, I know I'm going to hell," said Ed, who spoke in London today at an event hosted by IronPort Systems Inc., a security vendor owned by Cisco Systems Inc. "I'm actually a really nice guy. Trust me."
