A Russian man accused of running a global e-mail spam network that was at times responsible for sending a third of global spam has pleaded not guilty in a U.S. federal court, the BBC said on Saturday.
Oleg Nikolaenko, the 23-year-old resident of the town of Vidnoye, south of Moscow, is thought to be behind the notorious Mega-D network, comprising more than 500,000 infected computers.
The network, capable of sending up to 10 billion spam letters a day, was crippled late last year by the FireEye network security company.
Nikolaenko is charged with violating the U.S. anti-spam law, the CAN-SPAM Act, by falsifying information in commercial e-mail messages and sending a minimum of 2,500 spam e-mails per day.
The judge in the state of Wisconsin ordered Nikolaenko to be held without bail, the BBC said.
"He is a citizen and resident of Russia and the government believes, if released, he would seek to return there and the government wouldn't be able to prosecute him," prosecutor Erica O'Neil said.
Nikolaenko was arrested in early November at an auto-show in Las Vegas. If found guilty he faces three years in prison or a fine of $250,000
The FBI received information about Nikolaenko from convicted spammer John Smith and suspected spammer Lance Atkinson. Atkinson told investigators that the biggest partners in the spam were the Russians.
The FBI claims Nikolaenko received $459,000 from Atkinson for advertising in the network.
MOSCOW, December 4 (RIA Novosti)
