Inner Workings of a Million Dollar Porn Spam Operation
 

LEESBURG, Va. - As one of the world's most prolific spammers, Jeremy Jaynes pumped out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of Internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need.

Jaynes' business was remarkably lucrative; prosecutors say he grossed up to $750,000 per month. If you have an e-mail account, chances are Jaynes tried to get your attention, pitching software, pornography and work-at-home schemes.

The eight-day trial that ended in his conviction this month shed light on the operations of a 30-year-old former purveyor of physical junk mail who worked with minimal assistance out of a nondescript house in Raleigh, N.C.

A state jury in Leesburg has recommended a nine-year prison term in the nation's first felony trial of spam purveyors. Sentencing is set for February.

During the trial, prosecutors focused on three products that Jaynes hawked: software that promises to clean computers of private information; a service for choosing penny stocks to invest in; and a "FedEx refund processor" that promised $75-an-hour work but did little more than give buyers access to a Web site of delinquent FedEx accounts.

Jaynes, going by Gaven Stubberfield and other aliases, had established a niche as a pornography purveyor, said Assistant Attorney General Russell McGuire, who prosecuted the case. But Jaynes was constantly tweaking and rotating products.

Relatively few people actually responded to Jaynes' pitches. In a typical month, prosecutors said during the trial, Jaynes might receive 10,000 to 17,000 credit card orders, thus making money on perhaps only one of every 30,000 e-mails he sent out.

But he earned $40 a pop, and the undertaking was so vast that Jaynes could still pull in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead, McGuire said.

"When you're marketing to the world, there are enough idiots out there" who will be suckered in, McGuire said in an interview.

Prosecutors believe Jaynes had a net worth of up to $24 million, and they described one of his homes as a mansion, though the e-mail came from a house described as average.

Jaynes got lists of e-mail addresses ? millions of them ? through a stolen database of America Online customers. He also illegally obtained e-mail addresses of users of the online auction site eBay.

Prosecutors don't know how he got the lists, though McGuire said the AOL names matched a list of 92 million addresses an AOL software engineer has been charged with stealing. However Jaynes got them, they were particularly valuable because AOL customers and eBay users by their very nature have already shown a willingness to engage in e-commerce.

Under Virginia law, like a federal anti-spam measure that took effect months later, sending out commercial pitches, even on a massive scale, is not itself illegal. The e-mail must be unsolicited and contain false information as to its origin or transmission.

Jaynes did that in several ways.

He provided bogus contact information and company names when registering for Web sites, making it almost impossible for recipients to track him down. He also falsified routing information within message headers and used software to generate phony domain names identifying the e-mail server used to send messages.

"He would do that to circumvent the spam filters," said Lisa Hicks-Thomas, section chief for the Virginia attorney general's computer crimes unit.

Jaynes honed his techniques a decade ago as a distributor of regular, old-fashioned junk mail hawking a "mortgage refund processor," similar to the FedEx refund processor he pitched in his spam, McGuire said.

But the ability to set up shop in cyberspace allowed Jaynes to take his fraud to a whole new level, McGuire said.

A videotape prosecutors were barred from showing at trial shows Jaynes sitting amid his array of computer equipment, bragging about sitting at "spam headquarters." It appears, though, that Jaynes was sending out e-mails 24 hours a day, so he could frequently leave those headquarters unstaffed.

He didn't go to jail for spamming. He went to jail for buying stolen property.

9 years for 24 million........ not worth it.


he should have gone offshore too.

He didn't go to jail yet, that's the recommendation of the jury.

That's one hell of an operation btw, especially if it was completely unmanned. You would have thought if he was making this kind of bank, he would have moved his operation to a country which isn't as strict on its spam laws.

WG

and OJ gets to walk free and play golf all day, wtf, oh the irony.

Goddamn! $750k/month on a regular basis. :glugglug

9years? that's quite long.

Yeh huge $$$$ in spam. A bunch of the big players are on this board though they don't talk about it.

Trust me, I know more than you think :winkwink:

Cool.

Spammers are a pain in the ass.


They bring the whole industry down.
I don't see why everyone else should earn less so that they can go about their ill-goten gains.

:thumbsup

and why did that stupid fuck run his shit from america?

Impressive numbers for sure.

Spam does not bring this business down. That is BULLSHIT!

You dont see the government going after the online mortgage houses. But their stuff is spammed just as much or more.

Spam is a pain. So hit the delete button and get the fuck over it. What is worse, is the people downloading toolbars to people's pc, that they can not remove. Changing their home pages, and loading virus's to their computers to use them as a zombie for a spammer. Ans not it is usually not the spammer that makes the zombies.

So get rid of those guys, and things in the cyber world will be much better.

nice operation, why isnt AOL being prosecuted for spamming millions of unsolicited AOL CD's?

he's going to jail for all the shady stuff he was involved in, the actual spamming is the least of his worries.

cause he was stupid

9 years, what a joke.

yea no shit.. WTF would he not be off shore? It also sounded like he was spaming directly from home

" Jeremy Jaynes pumped out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of Internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need."


why the hell didn't he at least have his servers offshore? I guess it's proven once again you can't buy brains with all the money in the world.

So, you're a spammer too?

Give me $50,000 and I'll forget about claiming my $100,000 :winkwink:

What $100k are u talkin about?

That would of been the smart thing to do.

I think it's 10k and that has never started nor is it likely to start..The govt would go broke just from the GFY members .. :1orglaugh

Yes, email spam does hurt the porn industry. Parents get plenty mad when their children receive porn in their emails. Parents are the ones responsible for all these tough spam laws nowadays.

As for spamming mainstream products, thats not as bad, but still annoying.

The whole artical is BS.. Anyway once again a scammer not a spammer..

I've been getting some pretty interesting spam lately, particularly the ones that say "Make $1000 a day guaranteed as an adult webmaster"

Just what we fucking need.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

:winkwink:

damn, he was working on a massive scale. why oh why didn't he cover his tracks better?

I'd bury the money and serve my time. I don't know anyone who makes 24 million, even in 25 years. So the 9 year term would actually be very light. Heartwarming story. :glugglug

OJ didn't do it! The glove does not fit, you must aquit!

:1orglaugh

With the money he made he could've had great life in a 3rd world country, and keep spamming for the rest of his life. Fuck, he could bought a 3rd world country.

Don't believe the numbers. Even if he was mailing only aol with good sponsor blah blah, most probably he wouldn't turn 100k/month revenues with the volume mentioned.

He will serve maybe 3 of that 9.

In that time, while he's in jail, his $24M (with the right management) will turn into more like $36M.

Just sucks to have that amount of jailtime under your belt.

With all that money why not do the 9 years..

did they say anything was seized as proceeds of crime?

If not, hes all set.. walk out and into a lambo .. in the mean time just pay off some of the big shots in the pen to watch out for your ass ;)

Do you really think he'll get to keep all his assets?

The phrases "10 million emails a day" and "one of the world's most prolific spammers" don't belong in the same sentence :2 cents:

:thumbsup :thumbsup

IF and I use that word liberally, he was careless enough to keep his entire fortune and assets in the US all in his name, whether he does 9 months or 90 years, AOL and whomever else this pertains to, will not only sue him (and win) every penny and confiscate every possession he owns, he would still be in debt for the remainder of his life with the judgement they will impose on him.

Don't be surprised if in a year from now or sooner, his cars or whatever else he has is sitting on the AOL welcome screen, waiting to be given to a random AOL member.

Because he was a scammer and not just a spammer, he probably faces civil lawsuits from FedEx and God knows who else. Considering they were able to give specific figures about how much he made, that leads me to believe he does have ties to cash and assets in the US. If he got the full 9 years, he could probably be out in 2.5 to 3 years for good behavior. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, the civil suits haven't been mentioned yet and they are inevitable.

Even being set up 100% offshore, never underestimate the wrath of AOL.

He is not going to do anything near 9 years.

2 years max and some probation, maybe some fines and that's it. Alot of laws that have sentences etched in stone, don't even apply it. Example, driving under the influence in most states holds a 1 year jail sentence. No one ever does it, 98% of people get 6 months probation and pay very little fine like $500. But when someone gets arressted on driving under influence, Celebrity for example, they make it seem like he/she is done for life and going to be sitting behind bars forever.

This guy's lawyer says he has a negative net worth, ofcourse, all his money in offshore bank accounts, when he has cars, houses, everything on finance, and some pocket change (to him) in the bank here in US, he has a negative net worth. Actually, alot of rich people have a negative net worth, specially the ones just starting. Nothing new there.

I love how the media manipulates things to make it look like judgment day has let loose on this guy and he is going to pay for all his evil dos.

This guy simply fucked over alot of stupid onliners that fell for his crap, IRS is pissed because they never see the taxes on the offshore accounts, AOL has a stick up it's ass, so now it's a good time to do something about it and make it look like a spammer is going to do a jail time sentence, not even a Mafia boss will do. And what better way to let he Media sprinkle some glory on the story and make it look like Hitler of spam was caught and he is going to rot behind bars.

I hate all this shit.

At the end of the day, we can all say woulda, coulda, shoulda.

If the kid's happy with the sentencing and the time for the money he nabbed, then it's his deal...

That's bullshit, try being a homeowner. Talk about spam, my mailbox is full of SPAM. 9 years for doing what mail houses have been doing for YEARS before the Internet.

He'll be out in a year. Watch.

he didn't think he would get caught, and bet he thought if he got jail time it would be in the range on 1 to 6 months.

I read some place he went into hiding. :1orglaugh

i think you'll find they are going 2 get a lot harder on spammers, like this guy they didn't get him for spamming. Once they come after you, they will get you for something.

if you run it from some other country, better never ever come back to the US NEVER, they will get you.

i was going 2 say it :1orglaugh

they went after him because of the spamming :helpme

Wow...the fucker got greedy..that was his main problem..he deserves what he gets

oh well ... not like the spam is gonna stop cuz one of the "bigger" guys is gone.

Even being set up 100% offshore, never underestimate the wrath of AOL.

Oh so so right , don't make any Diff. if you move 2 another country, If they let him have a passport. Hell the IRS can put a hold on a passport, have been able 2 for years.

The guy is fucked for the rest of his life,