Leo Kuvayev (original) (raw)

Leonid Aleksandrovitch Kuvayev (born 13 May 1972), who usually goes by the name of Leo, is a Russian/American spammer believed to be the ringleader of one of the world's biggest spam gangs. In 2005, he and six business partners were fined $37 million as a result of a lawsuit brought by the Massachusetts attorney general. It was found that they were responsible for millions of unsolicited e-mails per day. According to Spamhaus he could be the "Pharmamaster" spammer who performed a denial-of-service attack (DDoS) against the BlueSecurity company. Kuvayev is also behind countless phishing and money mule recruiting sites hosted on botnets. He has been called a "spam czar", and a "virtual criminal".