Is there a private investigator in the house?

PC World has a short story about a spammer from the Ukraine that was shut down. Someone had paid to use his botnet to send Ron Paul spam, and that someone is said to be a small-time unknown spammer that made a few bucks for arraanging some spam attacks. This thing reeks of Karl Rove-style politics. Remember in 2004, when the Republicans had automatic phone dialing systems waking people up at 3AM to ask them to vote for such-and-such a Democrat?

You can read the technical details at SecureWorks. If that doesn't interest you, at least read their conclusion:

"With the facts above, we are left asking the question, “who paid to have the Ron Paul spam sent and how did they connect with the spammer, “nenastnyj?” The evidence shows that despite being capable of sending upwards of 200 million messages a day, nenastnyj is not one of the major spammers of the world, and seems to focus on spamming as an affiliate for larger “kingpin” operations. The Ron Paul spam was very much a “one-off” job among the other tasks in the Reactor interface. It almost seems as though there may have been some pre-established relationship between the sponsor of the spam and nenastnyj. However, given the current state of law enforcement activity concerning spam in the countries of the CIS, it is unlikely we will get an answer to these questions. However, it does give us an unprecedented look at both the front and back-end operation of a modern botnet spam system.

Obviously no Ron Paul supporter in their right mind would spam the world to get votes for Paul. The only explanation is that the spam was conceived by someone representing an opponent who is scared of his popularity.