Courtesy of Matt Cutts via Twitter
The U.S. Department of Justice has confirmed that Edward “Eddie” Davidson, 35, a notorious pump-and-dump spammer sentenced to 21 months in a federal prison, has escaped from the minimum security facility in which he was serving his time and is currently being pursued by the FBI, IRS and Colorado law enforcement agencies.
Davidson was a mastermind behind a large-scale penny stock pump-and-dump scam effort propagated via spam e-mails. After buying penny stocks and sending massive spam campaigns espousing some reason or other for people to buy the securities, he would sell his shares at a profit once the involved stocks had risen.
Altogether Davidson provided spammed messages for approximately 19 different companies. Read the full story here.
Oh, boy. Looks like I better tune up my spam filters 🙂
UPDATE: Sad ending to this story. On top of being a cowardly spammer, he turned into a cowardly murderer by taking the life of his wife and 3-year old child before taking his own. Very sad that he couldn’t just take himself.