A California court has awarded the popular social networking website Facebook damages worth $711 Million in an anti-spam suit filed by the networking portal against Sanford Wallace, who was the main alleged spammer, along with Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw. Although the monetary damages have been awarded, the networking website is hoping that an addition criminal action would send him behind bars.

In February, Wallace was sued by Facebook alleging that he was spamming users' message walls and profiles with links, an act which, the company said, started in November 2008. While Facebook, according to a post on the company's blog, "doesn't expect to receive the vast majority of the award", it is expected that the example would be enough to discourage other such spammers.  Sam O'Rourke of Facebook's legal team wrote, "In addition to the judgment, he now faces possible jail time. This is another important victory in our fight against spam".

This is not the first time that Wallace has been accused and found guilty of such a crime. In May 2008, he was ordered to pay $230 Million for spamming MySpace with links which led to gambling, ringtone and pornography websites. He was found guilt of violating the CAN-SPAM act.

Earlier this year, in a petition which was later dismissed, Wallace had filed a bankruptcy petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Nevada.