Canadian spammer Adam Guerbuez, together with 25 other people responsible for sending over 4 million messages to Facebook users, were ordered to pay $873 million in damages to the social networking site, according to a U.S. judge ruling.

Guerbuez did not show up in court, but he and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital, were found guilty of sending millions of spam messages referring to male enhancement pills, marijuana, but also other materials, to Facebook users.

This was possible after the spammers obtained login information from Facebook users, according to the complaint filed by the social networking site. This resulted in users receiving messages from family or friends’ accounts, which was extremely confusing.

Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital need to pay $463.2 million in statutory damages and $436.2 million in aggravated statutory damages to Facebook, but everyone is aware that the spammers are unlikely to pay the enormous sum.

According to the complaint, Guerbuez sent more than 4 million spam messages to Facebook users between March and April. He allegedly did so by stealing Facebook users' logon details using phishing messages and through data obtained from third parties.

He then allegedly bombarded Facebook users' message posting pages, or "walls," with messages from the hijacked accounts of spam recipients' Facebook friends.

Despite all that, Facebook welcomed the decision. Max Kelly, Facebook’s director of security, wrote on the company’s blog that they’ve won an important victory for the users.

“The bad guys behind those messages are always looking to find new ways to annoy people and Facebook’s users have been among those targeted,” he wrote. “We don’t take this affront to out users lying down.”

Regarding the damages awarded, Kelly said they didn’t expect to collect the money, but the positive aspect is that this award is a deterrent to anyone who would seek to abuse the social networking site and its users.