Siblings Guilty of Spam Felony, Partner Acquitted 286
saikou writes "According to AP Story (via SF Chronicle), brother and sister spammers just got convicted 'in the nation's first felony prosecution of distributors of spam,' while third suspect was acquitted. Jurors moved on to figuring out appropriate punishment (please, please, please give them some jail time. Pretty please). More spam cases for Virgina?"
The family that spams together (Score:4, Funny)
Coed Prison? (Score:5, Funny)
Now that I have mentioned it, I trust Slashdotters will elaborate on the porn possibilities.
Re:Coed Prison? (Score:3, Funny)
Another Cliche? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about another cliche?
In one month alone, Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders, each for $39.95, for the processor.
In other words, stupid is as stupid does.
10,000 people fell for it. Isn't that rather depressing? Ok, we probably saw vote counts for the election and wondered how so many people could be so wrong, but 10,000 people trying to order something for $40 advertised in spam, that tells you this isn't exactly a nation of rocket scientists.
You can't seriously fight spam until people stop being so damn stupid.
Re:Another Cliche? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, there are 300,000,000 people in the U.S., using big, round numbers. 10,000/300,000,000 = 0.000033333, so a trivial proportion fell for it. If you could only fall for it if you were sufficiently stupid, that would show that they need to be about 3.98 standard deviations below the average (from R):
> pnorm(-3.98788)
[1] 3.333318e-05
>
That's obviously over simplified, but you get the idea: in a Normally distributed population as big as
Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:5, Informative)
However like the article already mentioned, jurors who convicted Jeremy D. Jaynes, 30, and Jessica DeGroot, 28, later sentenced Jaynes to a nine-year prison term and fined DeGroot $7,500 for three convictions each of sending e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information.
Now it's a matter of protecting/preserving those sentences because the defending lawyer claims the prison term is an excessive punishment, given that this is the first prosecution under the Virginia law. He also noted that his client, a North Carolina resident, would have been unaware of the Virginia law. If they dare to appeal, prosecutors should appeal to increase the prison term to the maximum too!
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer [iclod.com] and win Half-Life 2
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:3, Informative)
This I believe is illegal, to increase a sentance based upon an appeal by the defence. At least, it is for sure in Canada, I'm not so sure about you crazy Americans
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:3, Insightful)
In America, once you've been sentenced, it's over. It can be shorted but never lengenthed, unless you do something stupid like make a shiv out of a toothbrush and kill your cellmate.
Sentence can be lengthened, sort of (Score:2, Informative)
If the defendants appeal their conviction and win but don't get the case dismissed, they could get the maximum if they are convicted in a future trial.
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes we need to crack down on online frauds, spam, worms, et al as much as the next guy but I really don't think that sending spam should carry (roughly) the same penalty as a rape conviction. Looking at these sentences our court is either saying "Sending spam is a horrific a crime as rape" or "Rape is no more worse than sending spam."
15 years is the sentence handed out in a rape & sexual battery conviction involving a minor [norfolk.gov]. This doesn't sit right.Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:5, Insightful)
Spamming is a non-violent but financially costly crime. Since it's never been a criminal act before, the people doing it don't have an innate feeling that they're doing something wrong - they don't understand that society is going to *put them in prision* if they're caught spamming.
The absolute best thing that could happen here would be for the judge to rule that the spammers get FIFTEEN YEARS IN PRISION (quietly, under breath: with possibility of parole in 6 months with good behaviour). That will give us a headline that will scare some of the other spammers, but will wreck the fewest people's lives.
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, note that the spam wasn't just spam... it was fraudulent spam that conned a lot of people out of a lot of money. Any con artist gets sent to prison. Why should a con artist who uses spam to perpetrate his scam get off lightly?
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:2)
Notice any decrease of drug dealers despite the lengthy jail time they face?
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:2)
Drugs have this annoying property that the users want them, and are willing to pay very high prices for it. With spam, the users don't want it, and the companies that use it are just looking for very fake advertising, or fraud. Fraud via spam is not that profitable, and the advertising via spam will not tolerate cost increases. So in short, you are right, all the spammers will move overseas.
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm no fan of spam, but do we really need a special statute to deal with it? The people in this article used spam as a means to commit fraud. They should be tried for fraud. I don't care whether the fraud was an elaborate confidence scheme committed by a team of clever matchstick men going door-to-door pretending to take donations for the LDS, or some shmoe sitting in his parents' basement playing evercrack with one hand while lazily sending off spam with the other.(There's some nasty imagery in there somewhere) Fraud == Fraud... plain and simple. Spam is about pissing me off by filling my inbox with crap every day. What have I lost, really, by experiencing the email version of what I do every day when I come home from work.... sorting through the pile of mail trying to see if there is -Anything- even worth opening.
If some shmuck sends me email with "fraudulent and untraceable routing information," is my liberty affronted? If so, why?... because I can't easily reply? Of course I'll grant that spam is annoying, but so are infomercials... and calls from political parties... and people who drive neon yellow sports cars. Should we next tack on some fines for fraud committed while driving an ugly sports car?
Why waste time litigating the relatively meaningless incidentals when our public servants could focus on the core criminal act, resolve the issue, and move on to the next case in a more timely fashion?
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:5, Insightful)
It is?
In discussions like this, you have to start by establishing what the value/benefit of the prison system is. Is it to punish the criminals? Of course. But why?
Punishment in its own right won't undo many of the crimes that carry jail sentences. It's simply a sad fact that once a murder, rape, or other abuse has been committed, it's done, and nothing can change that. All you can do is try to prevent it happening again, by:
In the first case, you're talking about locking someone up for as long as it takes to mend their ways, potentially indefinitely. In the second, you're talking about providing a sufficient disincentive to prevent others feeling it's worth it to commit the crime.
In either respect, of course 9 years is far too long. These people aren't a danger to society; they're a pain in the arse. To encourage others not to be pains in the arse, a custodial sentence may be warranted, but throwing someone inside for 3-6 months should provide a sufficient kick up the backside for a first offence (on top of fining them 100% of the takings they made through the spamming, of course).
Something like 9 years is enough to destroy a life and make someone coming out turn to far darker things just to survive, which is not a productive use of the prison system from any point of view. Save long jail terms for the crimes so heinous that what we really want to do is lock someone up and throw away the key, where that scale of disincentive is required to inhibit further crimes by others, and keeping the perp off the streets for that long is necessary for public safety.
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:3, Funny)
Let's give them an absolutely fair punishment: they should spend as much time in prison as the people that received their spam collectively spent time dealing with it. That would be, oh, 5-6 consecutive life sentences at least, I would think.
In my opinion, they got off lightly.
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think crimes that (in this case, theoretically) cost people money should be nearly as harsh as they usually are. Someone kills someone and gets 30 years, but some shmuck steals 150K from the bank he works at and gets 60. It's not right.
Non-violent crimes shouldn't command such sentences. It's bullshit. Sure, I hate spam, and these people wasted a little bit of my time perhaps. But give me a break, 9 years
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:5, Informative)
As for rape: Va. Code 18.2-61(C) says that rape gets you five years to life. It also says that 10 year olds can commit rape, but the Commonwealth will have to do extra work to prove it. Va. Code 18.2-63 gets you a class 4 felony for CK with a minor between 13 and 15, unless it's by consent, then it's a class 6 felony if there's a three year age difference, or a class 4 misdemeanor if not.
To sum up: spamming is a maximum misdemeanor, unless you're a real sleaze, in which case it's promoted to a minimum felony. Sex with a minor gets you a middling felony (2 to 10 years and up to $100,000), unless it's consentual, then it's demoted to a minimum felony. In other words, bulk spamming AOL is the same to the state of Virginia as consentual sex with a minor. Maybe you don't like that, but that's the way the scale works.
P.S. Under Va. Code 18.2-370.2, if you have sex with a minor, you can't hang around schools. If only bulk spamming meant you couldn't hang around the Internet...
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term ... um how about FRAUD? (Score:2)
Fraud looked like the big issue - Fines? (Score:2)
And of course, if the fraud was what it sounds like, those $39.95 make-money-fast kits tell their customers how to be spammers themselves, so they not only anno
A little harsh, all right... (Score:3, Funny)
Jeremy: Lotsa stuff - Viagra, mostly.
Bubba: Viagra? You mean "V14gr4"?
Jeremy: Yeah, that's right. And porn, I did a lot of porn.
Bubba: Pr0n, huh? Got any on ya? I could even use an "18+thumbnail" about now. This place makes even somethin' like you look good.
Jeremy: Nah
Bubba: MORTGAGES! Come here, you sunnabitch, I knew I didn't like yer looks!
Jeremy: Guards! Help!!!
Guard: Yeah, *yawn
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:2)
So what's the sentence for (say) 25 million counts of rape & sexual battery convictions involving a minor?
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:2, Insightful)
The primary purpose of moderation is to improve the reader's experience. Rewarding the poster is secondary and not all that important.
Prosecutor can't appeal to raise the sentence... (Score:2, Informative)
--AC
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:2)
Since when was ignorance of the law a defense? Surely it must be one of the most widely known tenets of law that ignorance of the the law is not a defense?
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term (Score:2, Funny)
Not the first felony conviction for spam distribut (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not the first felony conviction for spam distri (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener...
rj
Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Please ? (Score:2, Insightful)
What ? Don't you think there are other crimes that deserve such a real punishment ? Spam is easily filtered with spamassassin and friends (I should know, it gets rid of thousands of spams daily for me), jail should be for murderers, rapers, corrupted politicians, etc.
Re:Please ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please ? (Score:2)
Re:Please ? (Score:2)
Not that I'm particularly
Re:Please ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please ? (Score:2)
Oh wait, nevermind (-;
Re:Please ? (Score:4, Insightful)
The costs come back to the user because the ISP has to pay for the mail servers, which have to be able to handle the incoming mail and filter systems which require more horsepower, etc. That cost comes down to the end user, so yes, that ~5MB/user per month can get real high real fast.
Imagine 1024 users, so now the spammer's utilized 5GB of bandwidth that they never paid for. And don't spammers hit like 10k+ people at a time.. that's 50+GB of transfer that they don't pay for and no one wants.
Re:Please ? (Score:2)
Re:Please ? (Score:2, Insightful)
What does that have to do with this? Are you saying that there are only so many crimes that can have jail time associated with them?
Spam is easily filtered with spamassassin and friends
Yes, and murder and rape are easily prevented by staying indoors and arming yourself. And it's actually *prevented* - unlike filtering, which just hides the problem.
How about jail time for murderers, rapists, *AND* spammers?
Spammers are thieves at the very least (Score:5, Insightful)
They steal bandwidth. They steal disk space. They steal our time, and time costs dearly. You can't replace it.
So until you can find a way to force them to pay restitution to everyone they've robbed, don't try to paint them as harmless.
Now add in scammers, pornographers, and all the other crap, and they deserve much, much worse than they're getting. What, you don't think porn matters? When it gets into my house, in front of me, or my wife, or my kids, it damn well matters. If you try to walk into my house and expose us to porn, you might very well leave in an ambulance if you aren't awfully quick on your feet.
Re:Please ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Please ? (Score:3, Funny)
Of course it is. That's what make it a fun to send a spammer in there with them and see how long he lasts. This should be the most fun since the Romans fed Christians to lions.
Re:Please ? (Score:2)
imo the jail term should have been shorter and the fine 1000x larger. because they'll just start spamming again once they get out of prison. they made nearly $400,000 in one month through their criminal scam. a $7500 fine is nothing to them.
Spam is easily filtered with spamassassin and friends (
Re:Please ? (Score:2)
Re:Please ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. Spam is annoying, and takes up some bandwidth, but I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of it. If you don't like reading spam (some weird people actually do want to buy penis and breast enhancement toolkits) - get a filter.
There are several reasons. For one, many spammers take measures to fool filters specifically to make sure that people who are annoyed enough by their junk to install a filter continue to be annoyed.
Many spammers are advertising SCAMS in the first place. Th
Re:Please ? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because you don't run an ISP, or you haven't had your net connection terminated because a spammer got a zombie process onto your machine & started sending out spam.
There are estimates that at least 40% of all email being sent through the Internet is either spam or attempted spam. Think of how much wasted bandwidth that represents, and how much it costs to maintain the equipment! Are the spammers paying for all of that bandwidth usage?
Re:Please ? (Score:2)
Obviously spoken by someone who has never lost work because of an email deleted by a filter.
Not to mention the server costs involved. Consider large ISPs, like AOL or Road Runner. If 2/3 of their bandwidth is spam, they could process their real mail with only 1/3 as many servers and probably use several sys admins for other work. For them, getting spammed is more like someone setting fire to the shrubbery. Maybe a car
Re:Please ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again, I'd *love* to have a "do not mail" list to match the do not call list. I'd even be willing to pay full fare for sending letters. While I'm at it, I'd also pay for commercial free TV.
Re:Please ? (Score:3, Informative)
Jail time? (Score:3, Funny)
You said "jail time". Is that some sort of newfangled lawyer shorthand for "go all Vlad-the-Impaler on them in front of Genuity or Verio headquarters pour encourager les autres?"
Because if all you mean is "locked in a small room, given free room and board for a few years, subject only to the occasional prison rape", then you'd better make yourself scarce. This here's Slashdot, and we don't take kindly to yuppified murketeering types who publicly express sympathy for spammers 'round these parts.
Jail time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Jail time? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Jail time? (Score:2)
Re:Jail time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now put in jail time- the equation changes. People don't want to go to jail. Where simple fines don't act as a major deterrent, jailtime does. The amount of money to be made has to be very high for jail to be worth the risk. Would you risk jail for 10K? I wouldn't.
Re:Jail time? (Score:2)
Re:Jail time? (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets face it- you will never stop crime. All you can do is try to prevent it. Part of that is by punishing people who commit them. Trust me, if all I had to lose from it was money, I have a rather lengthy list of people whom I think the world would be better off without. You can find a partial list in the phone book under the work "lawyers"
Re:Jail time? (Score:2)
Re:Jail time? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not going to dispute that. That being said, I'd like to point out that the editor didn't really read the article. The law provides for a maximum of 15 years jail time for spamming, which is what the prosecution was seeking. In other words, Virginia already determined that they think spammers are criminals worthy of jail time in certain cases.
This case went before a jury, who determined:
Re:Jail time? (Score:5, Funny)
Felony conviction? (Score:5, Interesting)
The credit card orders make this definitely a fraud case, but if that same punishment was applicable without the fraud... I can't lookup the law as the article doesn't mention it, but I'm very afraid.
Re:Felony conviction? (Score:2)
2) they most likely sent their spams through thousands or millions of compromised hosts. same as breaking & entering, destruction of property, etc. the economic burden of this on this number of victims is huge.
pretty clear it should be a felony. the only thing i disagree with is the pittance fine of $7500. it should have been several million at least.
Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
This tidbit was less promising: "Prosecutors compared Jaynes and DeGroot, both of the Raleigh, N.C., area, to modern-day snake-oil salesmen who used the Internet to peddle junk like a 'FedEx refund processor' that supposedly allowed people to earn $75 an hour while working from home."
People are still biting on frauds of all sort, and the internet has become the prime location for it.
There is no real solution to stupidity, at least until designer babies are a reality.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
Does the punishment fit the crime? (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole idea of "lock 'em up and throw away the key" has been beaten into our heads by politicians playing on our fears. So we automatically suggest spammers go to jail with other terrible offenders, like the guy who got caught with a baggie of wacky weed at a Grateful Dea
Re:Does the punishment fit the crime? (Score:2)
I agree with you on the massive financial penalties though - bankrupt these people with fines equal to the amount they made from illegal spamming, give them a few months in jail with the caveat that if they do it again, it will be years, and the spamming busines
Re:Does the punishment fit the crime? (Score:2)
Just "annoying"? Attempted fraud is a criminal offense. What do you think the punishment for tens of millions of counts of attempted fraud should be?
Re:Does the punishment fit the crime? (Score:2)
While I sympathize with the cries of "Off with their heads", I don't think jail time is really appropriate in this case. I think we need to save our prisons for people who have done something Really Bad, not something Really Annoying.
Please read the article. Not only did they spam, they also ran a fraudulent business on top of the spamming. The cited case was a fraudulent "business opportunity" that they sold for $40. They sold 10,000 of them, which simple math says is $400,000.
If someone hit up a
Re:Does the punishment fit the crime? (Score:2)
Hrm. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since, however, they were tried simply on sending spam and NOT fradulent sales, I find this very disturbing. If the law they were being tried on was sending junk mail, does the content of the mail actually matter under this law? Why would the judge allow that information to be even considered?
It's kind of like trying someone for stealing a car, and saying it's a worse crime because he had a crack rock in his pocket. Unless the law stipulated stronger punishment for having drugs in a stolen car, it should be left out of the case.
Appropriate sentence for spamming? (Score:5, Funny)
What a pity Hannibal Lecter is a character in a movie. I'm pretty sure that an appropriate sentence should involve him, and a bottle of chianti.
Re:Appropriate sentence for spamming? (Score:2)
Re:Appropriate sentence for spamming? (Score:2)
It is the other white meat, after all.
Re:Appropriate sentence for spamming? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not an unreasonable interpretation, actually. In the founding fathers' time many cruel punishments were usual, and it's quite plausible to think that they meant only this: ``If the punishment is not the usual one for the crime, it must not combine cruelty (or perhaps an unusual degree of cruelty) with novelty.'' If they had mea
Depressing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depressing (Score:2)
If you ask me, the guy should feel lucky it wasn't twenty-five-years-to-life.
Stretching it a bit... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you read the article, this really was a case about FRAUD. The sentences were handed down heavily because they defrauded people of almost $40k. Spam just happened to be the medium they chose to do it in.
I really doubt that, had these folks run a legit business and didn't defraud people, that they'd have gotten such heavy sentences..
An AOL made punishment, not justice. (Score:3, Insightful)
These people are being punished for annoying AOHell. Ordinary con men don't get 9 year in prison. There's not enough room there for violent people as is. Con men come and go from jail, till they flunk the three time loser limit. With so many ordinary frauds walking the street you have to wonder what this case represents. This is more AOHell flexing it's muscles than it is
Re:Stretching it a bit... (Score:4, Informative)
they made nearly $400,000 in a single month while operating this scam.
if they were operating it for any length of time, it's easy to see they defrauded people of millions.
isn't it V-I-R-G-I-N-I-A? (Score:2)
ain't gonna get much of that where he's going...
"More spam cases for Virgina?" (Score:2)
Not so great news (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the crimes involved (not just spam but fraud), and that all the defendents made millions (and the property records prove it), it's damn sad that one got off completely and pne that was convicted got only 3 "fines" of $2500 each. She must be laughing here head off now.
Appropriate punishment - scarlet letter (Score:2, Funny)
Two years in jail and 15 years of being forced to use the address "myname@convictedspammer.va.us" for all your email is an appropriate punishment.
Even sweeter - you have to use a 110bps teletype to access your mail.
Since trash is trash, for community service, you can clean up trash along the highways.
solution (Score:2, Funny)
Motivation (Score:3, Interesting)
There are alternative justifications for crimes such as rape.
Some people take those crimes increadibly personally, (which may be a sideeffect of the propaganda used to discourage negative behavior).
Spammers are engaging in an utterly destructive and antisocial crime, their chances of rehabilitation using common methods is almost nill.
If it were possible to have a perfect determination of the antisocial motivation of an individual spammer the penalty should be INCREADIBLY harsh.
Re:Motivation (Score:2)
Spam should not be jail time, that seems stupid. It makes about as much sense, personally, as drug users getting jail time when they should be getting rehab.
Spammers should be fined significantly, and be put on probation of not owning a
Stealing time (Score:2, Interesting)
red states (Score:2, Funny)
Cost of spam (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps each individual message isn't much of a problem in and of itself, but when taken in aggrigate, the millions of messages he sent cost thousands of bucks to business and individuals. Children were exposed to things that their parents didn't want them to see. People were conned out of money and who knows what their credit card numbers were used for!
Perhaps when you think of it like this, you will see the beach rather than the individual grains of sand and realize that this man, and his accomplices are CRIMINALS and that the outrage isn't that he got a lengthy sentence but that the other escaped with too light of a fine.
Perhaps that last part is conjecture on my part, I do not know as well as the court what her role was in this criminal enterprise. But I find myself wishing that they were prosicuted under the RICO act.
say "thanks" to John Levine (Score:2)
-russ
What about posession? (Score:3, Funny)
- Thomas;
Re:Spell check (Score:2)
Re:Spell check (Score:3, Funny)
Or pick another state, please. I first read that as "More spam cases for Viagra". Woops.
Re:They need jail time (Score:2)
*kicks self*
Re:They need jail time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They need jail time (Score:5, Funny)
For a spelling mistake? That's a little harsh.
Re:They need jail time (Score:2)
I meant to reply to the article, not northcat's comment. Didn't catch myself until after I hit submit. Well, I guess I did manage to unintentionally make my post funnier...
Caneing (Score:3, Interesting)
The U.S. pretends that it's system of justice is somehow too civilized to allow caneing like Singapore does, but I question that.
Caneing is quite aversive to the criminal. I can't imagine they'll decide they don't mind being caned again. Unlike prison, it doesn't further alienate the criminal by re-socializing them to a prison environment, then expect them to be well adjusted members of society when released (or rather pretend to expect).
Given the things that are allowed (sometimes encouraged) to happen
Re:I'm gonna keep this simple (Score:3, Insightful)
What is to deter them? Just like oil companies, they are fined a fee that doesn't equate to a penny on the dollar for what they are raking in. That isn't even a slap on the wrist and is not even a deterrant for doing the crime.
I hate to say it, yes even as a Texan, a few examples must be made. And while I do not believe in the death penalty, I believe that spammers and anyone that writes/promotes or profits in anyway whatsoever spyware/malware