There actually have been a half dozen arrests of major spammers. MSNBC recently had an article about "the ten spammers you love to hate," and the amount of junk they were sending is huge.

The most recent action that may have affected what people are receiving was not directly against individual persons, but was the complete shutdown of several servers (and the ISPs running them) who were providing the connections that many spammers (and other more malicious malware distributors) were using.

Most service providers do make an attempt to detect and limit inappropriate use; but the ones shut down of course just "had no idea anything was going on."

My recollection is that it was claimed that three "servers" processed close to 50% of all the spam circulating at the time of the shutdowns, although several smaller ones also were closed.

It's likely that new "tolerant" (oblivious) servers will be found, and the flood will resume. If you happen to have been getting your goodies via one of the closed servers, you may see a temporary drop; but it's unlikely to last too long.

John