Scott Richter and his company, OptInRealBig.com of Westminster, Colo., have agreed to pay Microsoft $7 million in a settlement related to accusations that Richter has been one of the world’s top spammers.  Although he admitted no guilt to these accusations in the settlement, he did say he will not be sending spam in the future.

Microsoft said it will use the money to investigate other alleged spam and related activities, and also donate $1 million to technology centers that serve underprivileged children in New York state. Richter and his company had also been under fire by New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer.

The settlement is conditional upon dismissal of bankruptcy petitions that Richter and his company had previously filed in Colorado, in an apparent strategy to avoid being hit with major civil and/or criminal penalties related to its alleged spamming activities in the past..

"Spam traps" set by Microsoft last year caught some 8,000 messages containing 40,000 fraudulent statements, Spitzer said earlier this year, and he described Scott Richter as one of the three biggest spammers in the world. But Richter has now been removed from the Register of Known Spam Operators maintained by the Spamhaus Project, and word of his settlement with Microsoft seem to show tangible results related directly to Microsoft’s recent intense efforts to eliminate spam from cyberspace.