There is a report at PC World by Robert McMillan of IDG News Service about a recent upswing in compromised gmail accounts being used to send spam.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/194635/drugdealing_spammers_hit_gmail_accounts.html

slashdot: http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/04/20/2235257/Escalating-GmailSpamming-Attacks?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

It's the same issue as mine!