No one likes receiving unwanted messages, and one man was responsible for sending 27 million of them to Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) users. This is a legal matter that stretches back years, and involves approximately 500,000 Facebook accounts that were compromised.

The Spam King has been freed on bond and is due to be sentenced in December with a $250,000 fine and about three years in prison. Sanford Wallace pleaded guilty to fraud and criminal contempt when he appeared in a federal court in California on Monday.

Between November 2008 and March 2009, Wallace fraudulently obtained Facebook users’ login credentials “to gain access to their accounts and send them unsolicited commercial electronic messages”, the release said. Sentencing will not take place until this upcoming December.

Haag said Wallace also admitted he violated a court order not to access Facebook’s computer network. Facebook had filed lawsuits against two other spammers at the time, as well.

In 2009, Palo Alto-based Facebook sued Wallace under federal anti-spam laws known as CAN-SPAM, prompting a judge to issue a temporary restraining order banning him from using the website. He was indicted by a grand jury in August 2011.