Social networking site Facebook has been awarded a huge $711m (£430m) by a Californian court, following a judgement against professional spammer Sanford Wallace.

The court found Wallace guilty of breaking the Californian Can-Spam Act by sending false or misleading marketing emails.

"Today a San Jose court awarded Facebook $711m in damages against Sanford Wallace, one of the spammers who accessed people's accounts without their permission and sent phony Wall posts and messages," said Sam O'Rourke, lead council for litigation and intellectual property at Facebook, in a blog post.

"While we don't expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals."

The case reached court in March, and Facebook is keen that the ruling and punishment will result in less spam for its users.

"Most notably, the judge referred Wallace to the US Attorney's Office with a request that Wallace be prosecuted for criminal contempt, which means that, in addition to the judgement, he now faces possible jail time," said O'Rourke.

"This is another important victory in our fight against spam. We will continue to pursue damages against other spammers."

Facebook was awarded $873m (£528m) in November last year after a judgement against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital. O'Rourke said that Guerbuez had been sending sleazy messages to Facebook users.