5 Dec 2010

Not guilty plea in global spam scheme

6:18 am on 5 December 2010

A Russian man has pleaded not guilty to operating a spam e-mail business that may have accounted for one third of all global spam.

He's appeared in a federal court in Milwaukee in the United States on Friday and was remanded without bail until a further hearing on 21 December.

Oleg Nikolaenko, 23, was arrested in Las Vegas last month and charged with running an international network of more than 500,000 virus-infected personal computers that sent billions of emails.

Sellers of fake Rolex watches and "male enhancement drugs" paid substantial fees to the network before it was shut down, according to court documents filed by an FBI cyber-crimes investigator.