Authorities Shut Down Spam Ring Oct 15, 2008, 14 :47 UTC (2 Talkback[s]) (2895 reads) (Other stories by Brad Stone)
"The security firm Marshal Software, which assisted the F.T.C. with the investigation, estimated in court documents that the group’s Mega-D botnet - named after one of its pill products — was made up of 35,000 computers and could send 10 billion e-mail messages a day. In January, the botnet was the leading source of spam on the Internet, the firm estimated.
"F.T.C. investigators also said they monitored the group’s finances closely and that it cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone."