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(Bloomberg) — A Las Vegas man pleaded guilty to sending more than 27 million unsolicited messages through Facebook Inc. servers after gaining access to about 500,000 accounts on the social network, according to prosecutors.

Sanford Wallace, 47, known as the “Spam King,” admitted to his mass spamming in 2008 and 2009 while pleading guilty Monday to fraud and criminal contempt, San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said in a statement.

Wallace also admitted that he violated a court order to not access Facebook’s computer network, according to the statement. He was released on bond and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 7 by U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila in San Jose. He faces as long as three years in prison plus a $250,000 fine.

Wallace’s lawyer, William Burns, didn’t immediately return a call after hours seeking comment on the plea.
The case is U.S. v. Wallace, 11-cr-00456, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

To contact the reporter on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco federal court at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Peter Blumberg