MCI grossed an estimated $5 million/year violating the law in its home state of Virginia, by knowingly hosting sales of a Russian virus used to turn PCs into spam zombies.

The full story, by Spamhaus' Steve Linford (below) was distributed online today. It charges that MCI knowingly hosts Send-Safe.Com, which sells a spam virus that takes over innocent computers and turns them into spam-sending proxies. Linford tracked Send-Safe to a Russian, Ruslan Ibragimov. Linford estimates MCI earns $5 million/year from its work supporting spammers.

The theft of broadband-connected PCs by viruses, mainly Send Safe and another Russian-made program, Alexey Panov's Direct Mail Sender ("DMS"), is responsible for 90% of the spam coming into AOL and other major ISPs, Linford charged.

Here's the nut graph:

MCI Worldcom not only knows very well they are hosting the Send Safe spam operation, MCI's executives know send-safe.com uses the MCI network to sell and distribute the illegal Send Safe proxy hijacking bulk mailer, yet MCI has been providing service to send-safe.com for more than a year.

Want this made a little more explicit? Read on.

For over two years Spamhaus has repeatedly informed the same MCI executives that the distribution of 'stealth' anonymous spamware is also illegal in the State of Virginia where MCI UUNet is based. In other words, we do not simply see MCI's knowingly servicing known spam gangs as highly unethical activity for an ISP to be involved in, we also see it as being illegal in MCI UUNet's home state.

It is impossible to overstate the courage it took for Linford to publicize this. MCI is a very large, and a very powerful company. It has a lot of lawyers who could, if Linford is wrong, destroy him (and might anyway).

An indictment must also be issued here against the U.S. press, which left Linford alone to get this important story and has, to this date, done no work on it. Whoever gets this year's Pulitzer for investigative reporting is second-rate.