Federal prosecutors charged Robert A. Soloway on Wednesday with 35 violations of U.S. cybercrime statues, including wire fraud, identity theft, money laundering and violations of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Soloway, who owned and operated Newport Internet Marketing Corp., allegedly offered to sell "broadcast e-mail" software and services to clients and spammed tens of millions of e-mail messages to advertise the Web sites from which he sold his products, claimed the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington in a statement. Soloway used other people's e-mail addresses to make it seem as if other people sent the bulk e-mail messages, prosecutors stated in court filings. Using false information in the header of an e-mail can be a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act and constitutes aggravated identity theft, if the e-mail address belongs to someone else.

"Spam is a scourge of the Internet, and Robert Soloway is one of its most prolific practitioners," said Jeffrey C. Sullivan, United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington. "Our investigators dubbed him the "Spam King" because he is responsible for millions of spam emails."

The volume of spam seen on the Internet has risen, despite the passage of the CAN-SPAM Act. The lion's share of spam is now sent through bot nets -- networks of compromised PCs controlled by a single person or group. Using the bot nets, the most powerful groups are capable of taking companies offline, as happened to anti-spam firm Blue Security.

The prosecution has requested a ruling against Soloway, which would allow the government to seize $772,998, which it claims are the proceeds of Soloway's allegedly illegal activities.