A federal judge ordered spammers to pay $610 million to Yahoo! for allegedly scamming the company's customers into divulging personal information.

Yahoo! claimed in its 2008 lawsuit that a group of Nigerian and Thai spammers sent more than 11.7 million emails between December 2006 and May 2009 saying the recipients had won prizes in a lottery from Yahoo!. The hoax led unsuspecting users to submit passwords and other sensitive personal data, including credit card information and Social Security numbers, which the spammers used to commit fraud, by stealing funds from bank accounts and applying for loans and credit cards, according to Yahoo!.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in New York issued default judgment, ruling $27 million in statutory damages for trademark infringement, and $583 million in statutory damages for violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act.