Free Spam Nation by Brian Krebs

also seen the Despduck emails had independently come to the same conclusion.
    There was something else about Despduck’s letters that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. A week later, I went back and looked at my previous email correspondence with Vrublevsky, and compared it to the emails from “Despduck” that my anti-spam source was receiving. One commonality immediately jumped off of the screen in front of me. Both Despduck and Vrublevsky capitalized the letter y anytime they used the word “You” or “Your,” regardless of the word’s position in a sentence or how many times it was used. That capitalization pattern did not occur with any other words in the emails that shouldn’t have been capitalized.
    Then it occurred to me: What about that threatening “eyeballs”email I’d received just after calling Vrublevsky for a quote on the story about Ponomarev’s allegations? Sure enough, I saw the same capitalization pattern there. The pieces were starting to come together.
    But why would Vrublevsky go to such pains to launch this multipronged campaign to simultaneously win me over and coerce me into cooperating with him? My anti-spam source provided the answer, sharing several emails sent by Despduck. They showed that Vrublevsky believed I had accepted money from his pharma-spam rival Gusev in exchange for writing stories about Vrublevsky’s exploits. Vrublevsky also seemed convinced that I was in league with shadowy figures behind the Russian Business Network (RBN), the bulletproof hosting empire detailed in the first half of Chapter 2 . 7
    Despduck wrote (again, with the Y capitalization in “You”):
    1. Brian Krebs, believe it or not, was actually paid by RBN guys (by GlavMed mostly) to publish his research. All of his info is actually based on the fact that re-partners.biz had an office address of ChronoPay, which is bullshit, of course. Anyone can put any address anywhere.
    2. Then Ilya Ponomarev (NOT a leading politician in Russia) wrote a letter to the cops in Russia trying to somehow fuck Vrublevsky based on Krebs info. A stupid attempt, probably just making it look like it can work to get more money from Desp. Obviously nothing happened because ChronoPay has an extremely strong image and brand in Russia. ChronoPay will soon sue Krebs, and Ponomarev has already changed his opinion and sent another letter to the cops explaining he was not targeting Vrublevsky.
    3. All this happened because Vrublevsky has a position with the Russian Government in fighting spam, and what’s more important, in protecting Russian image abroad. Spammers hate him for that. I’ll explain more when You have questions.
    Once again, Despduck spoke glowingly of Vrublevsky as a cybercrime fighter who was being unjustly accused by the media and by his business rivals of orchestrating the nefarious activity he claimed to be battling. I was now more certain than ever that Despduck was Vrublevsky.
    On July 12, 2010, an anonymous source with whom I’d be corresponding via email sent me another massive trove of compromat stolen from ChronoPay. My source, who used only the name “Boris” in our email exchanges, said he was sharing the data out of frustration with Russian authorities, who he said seemed to regard Vrublevsky as hardly worth the trouble of shaking down for bribes, to say nothing of investigating.
    Brian,
    This file contains full information about criminal activity of ChronoPay and personally Pavel Vrublevsky on legalizing out-of-law money [sic]. We’ve tried all methods accessible in Russia, but the absolute corruption of the Russian police brakes [sic] the criminal case and marks time. We hope you can effectively use this information in the struggle for the cleanliness of the Internet. The same file was transferred two weeks ago to the FBI.
    Good luck,
    Boris
    The ChronoPay emails leaked by Boris—the “treasure trove of documents” referenced at the conclusion of Chapter 2 —show thatVrublevsky hired a hacker