It's a sad day for all of us when bad guys get caught, yet are allowed to walk freely.
As reported by TheReg, James Reno, involved in the creation, distribution and scams using Rogue Antivirus such as ErrorSafe, WinAntiviurs and XPAntivirus, was allowed to "walk" with just a small fine of $116K. The article suggest he scammed users out of $50 million by infecting their PCs with rogue crapware and scaring them into paying up.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/29/scareware_settlement/
What kind of message is the FTC sending to the rest of the bad guys? "Go ahead, infect millions of users and don't worry about jail time. Just give us a small percentage and we'll let you go."
I already had small hopes that law enforcement and governments do anything useful to help protect users. But this goes beyond absurd and is sending the wrong message that cyber-crime is OK as long as they pay their dues to governments.