Wednesday, October 12, 2005

UK: E-mail scam suspect made "threats to kill"

John Leyden writes in The Register:

Peter Francis-Macrae, the 23-year-old who is allegedly the UK's biggest spammer, faces a variety of charges ranging from threats to kill to fraudulent trading in a trial at Peterborough Crown Court this week.

Francis-Macrae allegedly threatened to slit the throats of trading standards officers investigating suspected scams that netted him an estimated £1.5m, a jury heard. He is also accused of telling a police switchboard operator, who'd recently been diagnosed with cancer, that he hoped she caught the disease.

Operating from a bedroom in his father's home in the village of of St. Neots, Cambs, Francis-Macrae allegedly made a small fortune through a series of domain registration scams, promoted using bulk email. He is accused of fraudulently selling unavailable .eu domains among other scams dating back five years. He's also accused of sending out fraudulent re-registration letters to UK domain owners.

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