In the largest fine ever issued under the US CAN-SPAM Act of 2004, the District Judge, Jeremy Fogel, ordered a Facebook spammer to pay the social networking company $837 million in damages. The fine is nearly three times Facebook's estimated revenues for 2008.

Facebook had sued a Canadian resident, Adam Guerbuez and his business, Atlantis Blue Capital - which Facebook alleges is fictitious - in August and accused him of sending more than 4 million spam messages in March and April.

According to Facebook's complaint, Guerbuez acquired log-ins and passwords of Facebook members, in some cases by luring them to phishing sites where they would unwittingly enter personal information. Then he used infected computers to automatically log into their Facebook profiles and pump out spam. The messages advertised Web sites owned by Guerbuez and others that offered male enhancement drugs, among other products.

Guerbuez did not defend himself or show up in court.

Sam O'Rourke, Facebook's senior corporate counsel said: "We know where he is and where he lives and we're looking for him to execute the judgment. We have no illusions that we'll get $873 million from this guy, but from what we can tell he has substantial resources. If he has $1 million, we'll take $1 million."

Facebook was famously valued at more than $15 billion by Microsoft in 2007, despite revenues at the time of about 1 percent of that figure. The company's director of security said in a blog-post Monday that the company does not expect to collect the settlement in full.