After receiving more than 3 million complaints, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) managed to break one of the biggest spam groups in the world, putting HerbalKing out of activity.

The company was promoting weight-loss drugs, prescription pills and many other similar products, operating in several areas including the United States, New Zeeland and China. The credit card transactions were handled from Cyprus and Georgia, while the products were shipped from India and China.

The decision reached by a federal district court in Chicago is that HerbalKing violated the Can-Spam Act of 2003 and demanded the group to freeze its activity. The group’s computers were able to send more than 10 billion e-mails every day, causing significant distress to many Internet users. Recent estimates showed that close to 90 percent of all e-mail sent today worldwide is spam.

“They were sending extraordinary amounts of spam,” said Jon Leibowitz, an F.T.C. commissioner. “We are hoping at some level that this will help make a small dent in the amount of spam coming into consumers’ in-boxes.”

 “This is pretty major. At one point these guys delivered up to one-third of all spam,” said Richard Cox, chief information officer at SpamHaus, a nonprofit anti-spam research group.

In addition to these facts, the purchase process did not include any prescription verification and there were no instructions or dosage information.

There are several civil and criminal penalties for such acts provided by the federal laws and the outcome of this action might influence the amount of spam received by Internet users everywhere.