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Spam Government The Courts United States News Your Rights Online

Siblings Guilty of Spam Felony, Partner Acquitted 286

Posted by timothy from the the-wrath-of-aol dept.
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?"
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Siblings Guilty of Spam Felony, Partner Acquitted More

Siblings Guilty of Spam Felony, Partner Acquitted

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  • The family that spams together (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:31PM (#10716873)
    Goes to the slammer together.

    • Coed Prison? (Score:5, Funny)

      by NotQuiteReal ( 608241 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:41PM (#10717025) Journal
      The family that spams togther Goes to the slammer together. This implies coed prison, since the family members cited are brother and sister.

      Now that I have mentioned it, I trust Slashdotters will elaborate on the porn possibilities.

    • Another Cliche? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @06:04PM (#10717319) Homepage Journal
      The family that spams together .. Goes to the slammer together.

      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)

        by RealAlaskan ( 576404 )
        10,000 people fell for it. Isn't that rather depressing?

        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)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:31PM (#10716875) Homepage
    Prosecutors did ask the jury to impose a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for Jaynes, and to consider an unspecified prison term for his sister.

    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
    • "If they dare to appeal, prosecutors should appeal to increase the prison term to the maximum too!"

      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 ;).
      • The parent poster was just being a bit zealous in regards to how he/she feels spammers should be treated.

        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.
        • If the conviction is thrown out and a new jury re-convicts you, the court can and pretty much must ignore the previous sentence.

          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)

      by evn ( 686927 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:56PM (#10717223)

      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

      I hate spam as much as the next guy but 9 years is a bit excessive IMO. I did a quick bit of googling to figure out what sort of sentences people get for other crimes in Virginia (because this was so out of alignment with how people are sentenced in Alberta) and I found this:

      COMMONWEALTH v. Milton Tanner

      On March 22, 2002, this defendant received ten years to serve for Rape, two counts of Carnal Knowledge and Taking Indecent Liberties with a minor.

      From this city of Norfolk page [norfolk.gov]

      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)

        by Chandon Seldon ( 43083 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @06:11PM (#10717394) Homepage
        Rape is generally accepted as being a horrible crime - everyone knows it's horrible, and normal people just don't do it. Basically if someone is committing rape, it's a good indication that they're eithor mentally unstable or otherwise are not considering the results of their action. The difference between 15 years in prision and like 50 years for rape would be pretty minimal, and keeping it shorter allows for some chance of the criminal becoming a useful member of society at some point in the future.

        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)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Who cares about "wrecking" a spammers life? Seriously???

          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?
        • So what? This just means more millionaire non-US spammers.

          Notice any decrease of drug dealers despite the lengthy jail time they face?
          • Notice any decrease of drug dealers despite the lengthy jail time they face?

            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)

          by sanguine_shadow ( 265397 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @07:31PM (#10718246)
          On the other hand... arbitrarily guaging sentences such as this just for the fear and shock value it will inflict on other would-be spammers is a negligent policy decision. Any sentence issued by the court should be meant to be carried out in full. If there are mitigating circumstances, that's where suspended sentence and parole should come into play.

          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)

            by Anonymous Brave Guy ( 457657 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @08:33AM (#10722433)
            On the other hand... arbitrarily guaging sentences such as this just for the fear and shock value it will inflict on other would-be spammers is a negligent policy decision.

            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:

            • removing from society someone who is expected to repeat the offence, and/or
            • providing a deterrent for others who might commit the offence.

            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.

      • >I hate spam as much as the next guy but 9 years is a bit excessive IMO.

        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.
      • Apparently, I'm the only one out of of these assholes around here that agrees with you.

        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)

        by deblau ( 68023 ) <slashdot.25.flickboy@spamgourmet.com> on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @07:02PM (#10717948) Journal
        Um. So if you read the Virginia statutes (which I can't get to right now, but are available here [state.va.us]), you will see that under Va. Code 18.2-152.3:1, spamming is a class 1 misdemeanor, unless it's in bulk or makes the spammer a certain amount of money, in which case it's a class 6 felony. You will also see that under Va. Code 18.2-10(f), each class 6 felony carries with it a minimum of one year and a maximum of five, a penalty of up to $2,500, or both. For those keeping score, three counts gets you 3-15 years and up to $7,500. Jaynes got right down the middle at 9 years, and DeGroot lucked out of jail but got the maximum fine.

        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...

      • 9 years does seem like a long time. Remember the American that was publicly caned in Singapore in 1994.... perhaps that would be suitable for spammers :-)
      • If you RTFA, you'll see that the spammer also committed fraud. He received 10,000 credit card numbers ordering a $39.95 so-called "FedEx refund processor" that would enable people to sit at home and make money with their computer. The guy could have made $400,000 from fake junk.
        • Unless they're being prosecuted separately for the fraud, it seems like the fine of $7500 was totally inadequate - at minimum, they ought to be forced to pay back that money as well as any other penalties they pay. He'll probably only do 5 years if he behaves himself in the slammer, but there's no excuse for letting him keep his half of the $400K.

          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

      • Bubba: What're y'in for, kid?

        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 ... *gulp* ... nah, but I can get you a nice deal on an interest-only mortgage...

        Bubba: MORTGAGES! Come here, you sunnabitch, I knew I didn't like yer looks!

        Jeremy: Guards! Help!!!

        Guard: Yeah, *yawn
      • 15 years is the sentence handed out in a rape & sexual battery conviction involving a minor. This doesn't sit right.

        So what's the sentence for (say) 25 million counts of rape & sexual battery convictions involving a minor?
    • A prosecutor can't aim for a higher sentence on appeal, it's against the law. Every criminal defendant has a due process right to have his or her conviction reviewed by an appellate court. If the prosecutor could go for a greater penalty on appeal, it would be an unfair burden on the exercise of the right.

      --AC
    • He also noted that his client, a North Carolina resident, would have been unaware of the Virginia law.

      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?

  • Not the first felony conviction for spam distribut (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:33PM (#10716897)
    A few years back, a guy stole a truckload of spam from a Hormel factory and got convicted of several felonies including distrubiting stolen spam.

  • Good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:34PM (#10716918)
    I find it insane the amount of internet bandwidth that spam consumes. The harder we crack down on this sort of thing the less of a problem we will have. In sinapore a fellow got whipped with a cane a few times when he spray painted a car; I bet he won't be doing it again any time soon.

  • Please ? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BESTouff ( 531293 )
    Please please please, give them some jail time

    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)

      by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:38PM (#10716983)
      except in this case, the punishment is more for the fraud they committed, rather than just the presence of unsolicited junk mail. you advertise a product for $X and hundreds of people buy your product and it doesn't do Y as you promised, that's fraud. And that's probably why the punishments are as harsh as they are.
      • Ok, I wasn't talking about the actual article (we're on /.) but about the editor comment, which implied it should go to prison just because it's a spammer. If you go that route, you'll require jail time for blog spammer, and even for slashdot trolls and ACs !
      • Yeah, well the problem I have with that is that if you're a big time CEO and defraud investors and employees out of their retirement funds, you don't typically get 9-15 in a Federal "Pound me in the Ass" prison. You typically get a couple years tops or a slap on the wrists, assuming your team of lawyers can't find some way for you to weasel out of it completely. The small time operator who defrauds thousands of people ot of $30 or $40 is the one who gets to go to the PMITA prison.

        Not that I'm particularly

    • Re:Please ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mordors9 ( 665662 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:40PM (#10717020)
      But we do give jail time to thieves. The spammers are stealing a portion of the bandwidth that I am paying for.
      • Sigh. How many times do we have to say it? It's not theft, it's copyright infr...

        Oh wait, nevermind (-;

    • Re:Please ? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Don't you think there are other crimes that deserve such a real punishment?

      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)

      by Roadkills-R-Us ( 122219 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @06:02PM (#10717298) Homepage
      What about theft? The total costs of spam are enormous, even without scams. Many, many millions of dollars per year.They suck up bandwidth and disk space, and waste millions of person-hours each year that could have bene used for something productive.

      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)

      by Feodoric ( 813201 )
      You can protect yourself against murderers and rapists with a can of mace. Does this mean that we don't need to send them to jail, because people should be able to defend themselves?
    • jail should be for murderers, rapers, corrupted politicians, etc.

      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.
    • they comitted criminal fraud on top of just spamming. their "product" was a scam. so the punishment reflects that. they not only ripped people off, they used a an extremely abusive criminal means to advertise it.

      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 (
    • You are filtering the spam after the cost has already been incurred by at least two ISPs (sender and receiver), and they will pass that cost on to you regardless of whether you use SpamAssassin. Your argument could be rephrased as "Vandalism is not a problem as long as those broken windows get replaced before I see them."

  • Jail time? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:37PM (#10716964)
    > Jurors moved on to figuring out appropriate punishment (please, please, please give them some jail time. Pretty please).

    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)

    by jrmann1999 ( 217632 ) <jrmann1999@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:37PM (#10716967)
    Is the editor seriously advocating jail time for spamming? I'm all for punishment, but I think taking every piece of property and dime of wealth is going to make a much bigger impact than sending them to a place that fosters the criminal mentality rather than reforming it. Reserve jail for hardcore felons that perform a physically harmful crime to someone else.

    • Re:Jail time? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by crazyfreakid ( 725264 )
      I agree, for purely practical reasons... putting them in jail costs us money, whereas fining them costs them money, and helps us pay court costs for prosecution of more spammers.

    • Re:Jail time? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @06:08PM (#10717370)
      WHat jail does is put a punishment onto spam. When its merely money, its a gambling game- odds of being caught*money lost-(1-odds of being caught)*money made>0? If so spam.

      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.
      • Riight, 'cuz that's worked *so* well for the War on Drugs (well, it has, if you mean it's lined the pockets of the corps that run the US prison system).

    • Re:Jail time? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pyrrhonist ( 701154 )
      Is the editor seriously advocating jail time for spamming?

      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:

      Jurors who convicted Jeremy D. Jaynes, 30, and Jessi

    • Re:Jail time? (Score:5, Funny)

      by MotherSuperior ( 695370 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @06:43PM (#10717796)
      Hey, look at it this way. Maybe after a few trips to a prison shower, enlarged penises might not sound like such an attractive prospect.

  • Felony conviction? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by autocracy ( 192714 ) <slashdot2007@sto ... m ['mo.' in gap]> on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:38PM (#10716981) Homepage
    I hope that the law they were convicted under had something to do with fraud written in it besides just sending untracable e-mail. Among all the other dumb things our country is doing, we're charging everything as a felony, no matter what the crime or reality behind it.

    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.

    • 1) their product was a criminal scam. hell, they were making nearly $400,000 a month via this fraud.
      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)

    by Commander Trollco ( 791924 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:39PM (#10717000)
    One hopes that this will have an effect, if not deterring, at least taking one offender out of the equation(if jailed/executed).

    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)

      by theonetruekeebler ( 60888 )
      The temptation to spam is substantial, according to TFA: "In one month alone, Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders, each for $39.95, for the processor." $400k in one month is pretty serious incentive to spam. Even if his sales offers were legitimate and he got a 10% sales commission, that's $40k in a month. The other $360k, just sitting there, was enough temptation for an already unscrupulous individual.
  • 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.

    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
    • 9 years is excessive for any non-violent non-recidivist crime, period. But I don't think jail time (on the order of months, not years) is completely unwarranted for large scale or repeat spam violaters, or those committing fraud on top of spamming.

      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
    • >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.

      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?

    • 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

  • Hrm. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Geekenstein ( 199041 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:44PM (#10717070)
    On one hand, I see 9 years in jail for sending nuisance email as excessive punishment, but on the other, they were making money committing fraud.

    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)

    by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:46PM (#10717102) Homepage Journal
    I wonder if we could get the ACLU to look the other way, just this once, so we could give them an appropriate sentence? Or maybe we could do something that's merely cruel: after all, the constitution prohibits ``cruel and unusual'' punishment, not ``cruel or unusual''. Cruel and usual is obviously ok.

    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.

  • Depressing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fdiskne1 ( 219834 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:58PM (#10717242)
    According to the article "In one month alone, Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders, each for $39.95". These are the people who need to be slapped. They are making spamming and scamming profitable. I'm sorry, but losing 40 bucks isn't enough punishment for this.
    • So in one month, they made $400,000 dollars through an email scam and they only got find $7,500 and nine years in jail? The maximum penalty for mail fraud (based on a quick web search) seems to be $5000 and five years in jail per violation. That's 50 million dollars and 50 thousand years in jail by my count.

      If you ask me, the guy should feel lucky it wasn't twenty-five-years-to-life.

  • Stretching it a bit... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CaptainTux ( 658655 ) <papillion@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @05:58PM (#10717255) Homepage Journal
    Boy, this seems like a fine example of journalists spinning something just to make it more interesting.

    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..

    • I really doubt that, had these folks run a legit business and didn't defraud people, that they'd have gotten such heavy sentences..

      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)

      by bani ( 467531 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @06:46PM (#10717818)
      add another digit or two to that.

      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.
  • More spam cases for Virgina?

    ain't gonna get much of that where he's going...

  • Well, my experience has been that spam cases have to do with Penis.

  • Not so great news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @06:20PM (#10717510)
    His sister, Jessica DeGroot, 28, of North Carolina, was fined $2,500 for each count, for a total of $7,500.

    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.

  • A long jail sentence is excessive.

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    put 'em in a cell with a guy who's taken one too many enlargement pills.

  • Motivation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <deliverance@NOSpaM.level4.org> on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @06:48PM (#10717850) Journal
    This is silly, they are considering the motivation. These people can afford computers so they are not starving therefore any crime of a financial nature by these people is pure greed.

    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.
    • rape is not about the sex, it is about having power (on such a primal, fundamental level) over someone else. This is the reason behind heterosexual males raping heterosexual males(in Iraqi prisons, or US prisons). It isn't about the sex or loniness, it is because they can.

      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)

    by CyBlue ( 701644 )
    Martha Stewart is doing xx? months of federal prison time for reacting to what someone told her in order to save money that was hers, so I don't think 9 years is too much for this case. While spam might not seem worth 9 years to someone else, I prefer to look at it and estimate how much of a negative impact this person is having on society as a whole. With this view in mind, spamming millions is more of a negative drain than beating someone bloody and cutting off one of their fingers. Sending them to pri

  • red states (Score:2, Funny)

    by astrodud ( 43361 )
    Have to say it -- has anyone else noticed that all the spammers (in the US, at least) are from red states?

  • Cost of spam (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gone.fishing ( 213219 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @08:39PM (#10718845) Journal
    Spam costs the world many millions of dollars in lost time, wasted bandwidth, and paying for services to deal with it. On top of that, most spam is in some way fraudulent. Some of it (that this spammer was apparently guilty of) was porn sent to children's email accounts.

    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, who served as expert witness in this trial. He runs abuse.net, the spam information and reporting service.
    -russ

  • What about posession? (Score:3, Funny)

    by thomasdelbert ( 44463 ) <thomasdelbert@yahoo.com> on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @11:37PM (#10720120)
    I sure hope posession isn't illegal like the distribution is. I've got a mega stash dude

    - Thomas;

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