A Tale of Two Spammers

From the who can and cannot spam files:

Dateline: July 22, 2008

The "spam king" was sentenced on Tuesday to 47 months in prison, with a ruling that the court hopes sends a message to other online criminals.

Robert Soloway, the man known as the spam king for the massive volume of spam he sent out, pleaded guilty to fraud, spamming and tax evasion after being indicted in May 2007. After an unusually long sentencing hearing lasting two-and-a-half days, Judge Marsha Pechman handed down her sentence in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle.

Dateline: August 18, 2009

The White House told FOX News that third-party groups sending online petitions to the official administration Web site could be to blame for a rash of e-mails that have gone out to people who never requested them. The theory is that these groups are including the names and e-mails of members and petition-signers along with the petitions themselves, in turn embedding those e-mails into the White House distribution list.

But online petitions are not the only culprit, and critics say the White House still has some explaining to do.

Several people who received the White House e-mails have told FOX News they're not members of any organization and have not been advocating for any cause. And they're puzzled over how the White House got their information.

And a new spam defense is born. The devil made me do it. Slippery slope anyone?