Melissa
Named after an exotic dancer from Florida, it was founded in 1999 by David L. Smith. It began as an infected Word document that was posted to the alt.sex usernet forum, pretending to be a list of passwords for pornographic sites. This made people curious, and when it was downloaded and opened, it would activate the macro inside and release its payload.
The virus would be mailed to the top 50 people in the user's e-mail address book, triggering a spike in e-mail traffic, affecting the e-mail systems of governments and businesses. It also often corrupts records by adding the Simpsons reference into them.
Smith was finally captured when he was tracked down by the Wordbook. The file was uploaded using a compromised AOL account and, with their help, the law enforcement officials were able to apprehend him less than a week after the outbreak began.
He cooperated with the FBI in catching other virus authors, prominent among them the developer of the Anna Kournikova virus. For his cooperation, he served just 20 months and received a fine of $5,000 of his 10-year sentence. The virus was estimated to have caused $80 million in damages.