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Associated Press
Jun. 25, 2007 05:14 PM
A Paradise Valley man and a Californian were convicted Monday by a federal jury on all eight counts stemming from an international pornographic spamming business they operated, federal authorities said.
The jury convicted James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Ariz., and Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, Calif., on charges including conspiracy, money laundering, fraud and transportation of obscene materials after a three-week trial.
The defendants organized and ran the spamming business in 2004, and their trial was the first to include charges under a 2003 act aimed at controlling non-solicited porn and marketing, U.S. Attorney Dan Knauss and Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher said.
The law created by the act was designed to crack down on the transmission of pornography in commercial unsolicited bulk electronic mail messages.
Fisher said the men grossed more than $2 million sending unwanted sexually explicit e-mails to hundreds of thousands of people, including families and children, while using sophisticated technology to conceal their identity.
The defendants arranged to log remotely onto servers in Amsterdam when the anti-spam act took effect in January 2004, to disguise that they were operating their business from within the United States.
They used bank accounts in the Republic of Mauritius and the Isle of Man to insulate themselves from U.S. law enforcement, authorities said.
Witnesses included three U.S. citizens who pleaded guilty to conspiring with Kilbride and Schaffer and aiding and abetting the operation as a whole, and eight citizens who complained to either the Federal Trade Commission or AOL Inc.
Kilbride and Schaffer face a maximum penalty of five years in prison for each spam act and obscenity offense, as well as a fine of up to $500,000, and a maximum of 20 years in prison for money laundering. Sentencing was set for Sept. 24.