Jail time for spammers
 

LEESBURG, Virginia (AP) -- A brother and sister who sent junk e-mail to millions of America Online customers were convicted Wednesday in the nation's first felony prosecution of Internet spam distributors.

Jurors recommended that Jeremy Jaynes be sentenced to nine years in prison and fined Jessica DeGroot $7,500 after convicting them of three counts each of sending e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information.

A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski, 30, was acquitted of similar charges.

The judge was still considering a motion from defense attorneys to set aside the verdict and will hear arguments on it a later date. He had said previously that he had reservations about allowing the case against DeGroot and Rutkowski to go to a jury.

Virginia, where AOL is based, prosecuted the case under a law that took effect last year barring people from sending bulk e-mail that is unsolicited and masks its origin.

Prosecutors said Jaynes, 30, and DeGroot, 28, who live in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area, used the Internet to peddle sham products and services such as a "FedEx refund processor."

The refund processor supposedly allowed people to earn $75 an hour for working from home. In one month alone, Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders, each for $39.95, for the processor.

"This is a snake oil salesman in a new format," said state prosecutor Samuel E. Fishel IV.

Prosecutors had asked the jury to impose a maximum prison sentence of 15 years for Jaynes and to consider some jail time for his sister.

David Oblon, Jaynes' attorney, argued that it was inappropriate for prosecutors to seek what he called excessive punishment because it was the first time the new law had been prosecuted.

Oblon also said that because his client was a North Carolina resident he would have been unaware of the Virginia law.

Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore applauded the convictions and called Virginia's anti-spam law the toughest in America.

"Spam is a nuisance to millions of Americans, but it is also a major problem for businesses large and small because the thousands of unwanted e-mails create havoc as they attempt to conduct business," Kilgore said in a statement.

9 years for a few million emails? shit

Good thing, they stoped him, but goddamn 9 years for computer crap, wtf :helpme

Too extreme, he should have just robbed a bank.

gee, wonder who the rat was?

way too extreme of a punishment but...

that is kinda shady ^

I hope every spammer gets ass raped in jail.

And yes, I know that the top GFY'ers are spammers.

They were scamming and spamming.. Like I always say regular mailers have yet to do time..

he was making good money

couldn't we just torture people like him. Perhaps tying him up and zapping him with a tazer or something. After a few days/weeks of that let him go. That may teach 'em.. who knows, -g

Damn this sucks HUGE BALLS...:(

lol when paedos regularly get off with a suspended sentance, this is extreme........

:1orglaugh

The US is so fucked up it's not even funny.

I know a guy in Austria that ROBBED A BANK and only got three years. They let him out every now and then for the weekend. He gets out this Xmas.

You know what is disturbing about this? A 9 year sentence with a VERY flimsy, circumstantial evidence case. They based this on 55,472 emails sent over a 3 day period? Is that a typo? Because someone could manually send more than that in an hour. And a handwritten note about needing proxies? That's really reaching.

I'm sure they had other documentation, but from what I read, the prosecution got a whole lot of something out of a whole lot of nothing. I can't imagine what others would be sentenced to, if they had far more incriminating evidence and charges against them.

I don't know what those (3) have/had set up offshore as far as money and assets, but this doesn't even mention the inevitable judgments AOL will have against them, based on very weak, circumstantial evidence.

This just goes to show you, how corrupt the system and their political pocket stuffers are. AOL Time Warner owns a big chunk of the US, with or without being an ISP. The governor of Virginia, Mark R. Warner. Warners are crawling all over the senate and so on and so on. Where are the antitrust suits against AOL Time Warner? I guess no one sees any conflict of interests in any of that though.

If people start receiving felony convictions based on "3 days of spamming", there will be waiting lines just to start serving your sentence.

jail spammers? the prison will look like a jar of jelly beans if that happen.

LMAO....it's all seized now, nothing but 9 yrs of Bubba to look forward to for these morons:1orglaugh