MySpace.com said it sued so-called “Spam King” Scott Richter in an effort to stop spam from being sent from MySpace.com user accounts.

The site, owned by News Corp., filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Supreme Court on Friday, the Beverly Hills company said.

Richter has been involved in legal cases against Microsoft Corp. and the state of New York over his business practices. He runs an e-mail marketing company called Optinrealbig.com.

Richter settled with Microsoft in August 2005 for $7 million, the largest settlement the computer company obtained in more than 100 spam-related suits active at that time.

Before that, he settled with New York for $40,000 plus $10,000 in investigative costs over his spamming practices. Also, as part of both agreements, Richter agreed to abide by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which outlines what constitutes spam and penalties associated with violations, and mandated that he use correct information when registering his domain names.

The Web site blamed Richter and his associates for millions of bogus e-mail messages sent to users, saying that several user accounts were illegally manipulated without permission in order to send advertisements to unwilling recipients.