Notorious spammer and scammer, Vardan (Vardanovich) Kushnir, was found dead in his Moscow apartment with blunt trauma to his head.Vardan (Vardanovich) Kushnir, Russia’s most notorious spammer, was found dead in his Moscow apartment Sunday. According to Interfax, he died of repeated blunt trauma to the head.

He was reviled among Internet users for his aggressive spamming tactics to sell English conversation programs at the American Language Center in Moscow.

Russian hackers tried to get him to stop by launching denial-of-service attacks on his Web sites. Others posted classified ads using the school’s telephone numbers to inundate him calls seeking cheap escorts.

Even his passport number and home address were published in some Russian-language bulletin boards. Was it the work of antispam vigilantes described in Brian McWilliams’ Spam Kings?

In Florida, Mr. Kushnir, of Armenian descent, set up a shell company called Sophim, Inc. with one Michael Orrin Walker, using an address at a strip mall. In 2001, he was involved in a securities scam in Kansas.

Neither Russia’s Internet users nor the government, which tried unsuccessfully to prosecute him for fraud-related charges, will miss him. He was 35.