Stock spammer indicted for fraud -- what took so long?

The Justice Department recently made headlines with its indictment of stock spam honcho Alan Ralsky, whom it accused of running a "spamming operation that, as alleged in the indictment, largely focused on running a stock pump and dump scheme, whereby the defendants sent spam touting thinly traded Chinese penny stocks, drove up their stock price, and reaped profits by selling the stock at artificially inflated prices."

Gary Weiss provides his usual skeptical insight, pointing out that what the "Justice Department doesn't say is that Ralsky was hardly holed up in some cave in Afghanistan. He was operating out in the open, and was even the subject of an article in The New York Times, for Pete's sake. The Spamhaus Project has a file on this man a mile long, and notes that the FBI raided his house three years ago."

The fact that it took the feds so long to do something -- and the fact that the SEC never did anything -- is interesting and indicative of the old saying that "the wheels of justice grind slowly."

Here's the lesson investors should take from this: the fact that no one has been arrested and trading hasn't been suspended doesn't mean that nothing is amiss. Investors cannot rely on the SEC to protect them from fraudulent investments.