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SEATTLE - There seems to be a lot of spam royalty out there: A Seattle man known as the "spam king" was sentenced to prison Tuesday, while federal officials said someone else with the same criminal nickname escaped from a prison camp in Colorado.

Robert Alan Soloway, who pleaded guilty in March to mail fraud, e-mail fraud and tax evasion, was sentenced to three years and 11 months in federal prison; a judge will decide later how must restitution he must pay.

Prosecutors said Soloway made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling so-called "broadcast e-mail services" and used networks of compromised computers to send out millions upon millions of junk e-mails.

Meanwhile, a U.S. attorney's office announced Tuesday that 35-year-old Edward "Eddie" Davidson walked out of a minimum-security prison camp in Florence, Colo., on Sunday.

U.S. marshals, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service are looking for Davidson, who was last seen about 144 kilometres north of the camp in the Denver suburb of Lakewood.

Authorities say Davidson made at least $3.5 million sending hundreds of thousands of spam e-mails for nearly 20 companies. He pleaded guilty to tax evasion and falsifying e-mail headers; in April he was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay the IRS nearly $715,000.