UK's biggest spammer charged with more offences

Accused of blackmail, fraud and criminal damage

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Spam, 20th December 2004 17:09 GMT

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The UK's biggest spammer, Peter Francis Clifford Macrae, has been charged with more offences, including blackmail, fraud and criminal damage.

Macrae - who uses variations on his four names to provide a range of different pseudonyms - was arrested and charged at the end of November for threats to kill, threatening to burn down a trading standards office that was investigating him, and making obscene phonecalls.

However, appearing at Huntingdon Magistrates court on Tuesday 14 December, he was also faced with a series of other charges including blackmail, transferring criminal property, criminal damage and running a business for fraudulent purposes have been added. He remains in police custody until his next court date in Peterborough today, Monday 20 December.

Macrae has been nicknamed the UK biggest spammer and makes the SpamHaus register of the top 200 people worldwide responsible for unsolicited email. He has previously been linked to a number of online scams including the misselling of unavailable .eu domains.

Last month, UK registry Nominet won an injunction against Macrae that prevents him from threatening Nominet's staff or even using the company Whois database of .uk domain owners. Nominet alleges he has been using the Whois to send fraudulent re-registration letters to domain owners.

UK's biggest spammer in court

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