Spammer fined $873 million

San Jose, Calif. -- A U.S. district court awarded $873 million in damages to Facebook to be paid by a spammer whose materials appeared to be endorsed by the Facebook users.

The judgment prohibits the spammer, Adam Guerbuez, and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital, from interacting with Facebook, except in restricted circumstances, InformationWeek reported Monday.

"We don't take this affront lying down," Facebook director of security Mark Kelly and the company's general counsel Mark Howitson said in an e-mail.

"We are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users," Kelly said in a blog posting Monday.

The award, issued by a federal court in San Jose, Calif., is the largest ever against a spammer under the 2003 Can-Spam Act, InformationWeek said.

The company said it was "unlikely" it would collect the judgment, against Guerbuez who failed to appear in court. However, "we are going to go after him," the company's senior counsel Sam O'Rourke said.

"We know where he is and we're in the process of executing the judgment," he said.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.