• Still need a Google Press Day invitation.

It's dead, Jim. Several reporters and spam fighters have checked on the Alan Ralsky story and told me it's false. The FBI's Detroit field office told one journalist that the Spam King was not arrested or held, is not in custody, and has not been indicted.

Did megaspammer Alan Ralsky (pictured) post bail? Did the Feds let him off easy? Or is the whole story a hacker-seeded hoax? Reader "Max Devlin" checked in on the Spam King:

It's not in the papers yet — damn those lead times — but a media frenzy is frothing around the fresh meat of the Spam King's arrest. (The backstory: Alan Ralsky, pictured, is in the DOJ's hands, and they're grilling him for info on other hackers and spammers in a plea-bargain session.) Ralsky's quickly becoming a useless pressure point for the DOJ as reporters blow up the story, alerting everyone in the spam and hacking world and sending them scuttling out of sight. Major media contact for the hacker community, MemeHacker, sends this chat log from a conversation with another hacker:

Local hacker "Memehacker" IMed in with a scoop on Alan Ralsky, the famed "Spam King" covered by the Observer and the Detroit News. Here's the breaking story: