Up to 80% of spam targetted at Internet users in North America and Europe is generated by a hard-core group of around 200 known professional spam gangs whose names, aliases and operations are documented in Spamhaus' Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database.

This TOP 10 chart of ROKSO-listed spammers is based on those Spamhaus views as the highest threat, the worst of the career spammers causing the most damage on the Internet currently. Spamhaus flags these as a priority for Law Enforcement Agencies.

The world's worst spammers and spam gangs this week are:

The 10 Worst ROKSO Spammers As at
11 June 2009
Rank Photo Spammer or Spam Gang Country
1 Canadian Pharmacy
A long time running pharmacy spam operation. Uses botnet spam techniques to send tens-of-millions of spams per day. Probably uses many affiliates all over the world to spam but is probably based in Eastern Europe and hosts sites on botnets and on Chines United States

2 Leo Kuvayev / BadCow
Russian/American spammer. Does "OEM CD" pirated software spam, copy-cat pharmaceuticals, porn spam, porn payment collection, etc. Spams using virus-created botnets and seems to be involved in virus distribution. Partnered with Vlad - aka "Mr. Green" Russian Federation

3 HerbalKing
Massive affilitiate spam program for snakeoil Body Part Enhancement scams. Also does replica luxury goods, pharma and porn. Spams via botnets, bulletproof hosting offshore and even sometimes uses fast flux hosting. India

4 Vincent Chan / yoric.net
Vincent Chan and his Chinese partners have been sending spam for years. They mainly do pharmacy, and are able to send out huge amounts daily. The use a vast amount of compromised machines, for sending, hosting and proxy hijacking. Hong Kong

5 Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov
So many Alex & Alexey spamming! Alex Blood tied to Pilot Holding & bbasafehosting.com long ago, then Alex Polyakov posted he owned them. Massive botnet and child-porn spam ring, also pharma, mortgage, and more. May work with Kuvayev and Yambo. Ukraine

6 Nikhil Kumar Pragji / Dark-Mailer
Through the Dark-Mailer Windows based proxy-botnet based spamware, this spammer is responsible for and behind a large portion of the world's illegally send spam. Australia
Queensland
7 Peter Severa / Peter Levashov
A spamming partner of Alan Ralsky and other spam gangs. Russian Federation

8 Yambo Financials
Huge spamhaus tied into distribution and billing for child, animal, and incest-porn, pirated software, and pharmaceuticals. Run their own merchant services (credit-card "collection" sites) set up as a fake "bank." Ukraine

9 Ruslan Ibragimov / send-safe.com
Stealth spamware creator. One of the larger criminal spamming operations around. Runs a CGI mailer on machines in Russia and uses hijacked open proxies and virus infected PCs to flood the world with spam. Russian Federation

10 Rove Digital
Botnets, malware, spam, pharming, DDoS. Inhoster, Cernel, Esthost, Atrivo. What else needs to be said? Estonia


Source: Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database + Spamhaus Blocklist (SBL) database. Detailed records on each spammer or spam gang listed can be viewed by clicking on the hyperlinks above.