Spam King Flagged in Seattle

Soloway appeared at a hastily scheduled hearing in U.S. District Court in Seattle, where he was set to go to trial in two weeks on a 40-count indictment that included seven counts of aggravated identity theft — which carries a mandatory two-year prison sentence added on to any other sentence — and 13 counts of money laundering.

However, federal prosecutors dropped all of those charges — some of which had been filed under an admittedly "novel" reading of the identity-theft statute — and all but one of the spam-related charges in exchange for Soloway's guilty pleas. Indeed, the most serious charge Soloway now faces deals not with spam but with nonelectronic mail fraud stemming from his failure to live up to promises he made regarding his e-mail-marketing software.

That charge carries up to a 20-year prison sentence.