Porn Spammers Get Five Years
Two words "porn" and "spam" have been forever linked ever since e-mail became a mainstay in our digital lives. Now let's hope the two phrases "porn spam" and "jail time" become forever tied. Two spammers were prosecuted under the U.S. anti-spam law CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and received five years in prison last week.
California's Jeffrey Kilbride and James Schaffer of Arizona, have been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison. Both were convicted of conspiracy, money laundering, fraud, and transportation of obscene materials, according to The East Valley Tribune, a newspaper covering the case.
The two men reportedly earned $2 million in porn spam profits since 2003 when they began buying e-mail lists and pelting recipients with junk e-mail linking to pornographic Web sites. To throw law enforcement off its tracks the Phoenix-based business used a server in Amsterdam to send its spam and also falsified headers and domain names embedded in sent e-mails. The two set up a dummy corporation in Mauritius and opened up bank accounts in Mauritius and the Isle of Man.
Harsh sentencing of Kilbride is credited to his attempts to prevent a witness from testifying at the trial. Kilbride received six years in prison and Schaffer received a 5-1/4 year sentence. Each was fined $100,000 and had to forfeit $1.1 million of their porn spam profits. They also had to pay $77,500 in restitution to AOL, which claimed 1.5 million of its customers complained about their spam.
Say it with me: "porn spam" and "jail time."
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" They also had to pay $77,500 in restitution to AOL which claimed 1.5 million of its customers complained about their spam."
So when do I get my $77, 500 for AOL spamming my mailbox with useless CD's?
Great comment 'conchchowder'! Definitely, the abuse from certain groups or companies is forgotten when the take the 'abused' part.
Anyway, regarding those two spammers, they deserve it and sends a clear message for those who still are 'spammimg' our inboxes.
If they have no mercy on us, the law shouldn't have either.
Giv'em more years in jail!
"So when do I get my $77, 500 for AOL spamming my mailbox with useless CD's?" ... never know when you'll need a few extra drink coasters...
It's nice to know that there are people trying to stop spam at the source, I might not need a good spam filter someday.
end result 2 million profit
minus 1.1 million forfit
minus 100k fine
minus 77.5k restitution to AOL
72.5k profit
srry but this is sending the wrong message if they even get to keep a cent of their dirty money
Two down, 20,000 to go...
I'd feel a lot better about this if it were some other kind of spammer. I certainly receive all kinds of far more dangerous con-spam every day.
It feel a bit too much like selective enforcement and covert censorship for me to be happy. Which is too bad because I would really like to see spammers collared.
Chowder; divide 77,500 by 1.5 million and you'll have your real restitution amount. Should be about .75 cents.
Lets see, $77,500:- 2 = $38,750 each devided by 1,825 days in jail. It looks like they are going to make $21.23 per day! Hmmm... I think I'll pass.
First of all, how many AOL users saw a dime of the paltry sum of $77,500? Secondly I wonder when ISP's are going to stop allowing users to send thousands of emails a day to "undisclosed-recipients." Don't tell me they aren't aware that their servers are being used for such purposes. Thirdly I want to point out that many ISP's are complicit and are selling, sharing, trading, or giving away our email addresses. Why? Oh yes, it's the REVENUE, stupid!
O.K.
Good job Internet L.E.O.s.
Now, when are they going to find, crucify, castrate, and/or jail the mega-schlong pill-pushers?
They need to attack that industry next, IMHO.
...just One Man's Opinion
mr. opinion: but i *want* a megaschlong. if not that, certainly a megadik. barring that, too--which would be sad--i'd still enjoy the opportunity to increase the size of "that certain part of the male anatomy."
where has the "damaged parties" been healed? NOWHERE! AOL gets $77,500 ??? , wholly cow, that will pay for their entire electric bill one month at the Corporate offices. Chump Change to yet another corporation that bleeds the end user till death do they part! Those two guys were EASY targets for the Feds and AOL to nail, that why they made them Poster Boys for their pseudo enforcement campaign. Any plebe from any high school learns its easy to e-mine email addresses from any number of sources. Better to redirect the effort to revamp the inet structure/protocols to fix it the right way!
Wow, it's a sad country we live in. Let's do the math again:
2,000,000 minus
1,100,000 minus
100,000 minus
77,500 is equal to
NOT 72.5K in profit. More like 725,000 (missed a decimal place). Please go back to school and learn how to spot things like this.
So anyway, 700k+ is not a bad deal for 5 years of work, although you would have to split it with 2 people, so that's 70k per year. Maybe they should have just gotten a nice web admin job, and saved their money. They could have avoided the jail time.
..even more ammunition to develop the SPAM-resistant firewall - that is you have the optoin to opt out of ANY email coming from a non-Can-Spam compliant country (like Mauritius listed above) ....if you have no need to get emails from countries other than US, Canada, UK, ...then why allow emails from outside there?
Tell your ISP you want that option!!
TR
Yes, let's redo the math the RIGHT way.
"The two men reportedly earned $2 million in porn spam profits[.]" (that was the TOTAL between the two of them.)
"Each was fined $100,000 and had to forfeit $1.1 million of their porn spam profits."
(EACH one had to forfeit $1.1 million. NOT forfeit $1.1 million between the two of them.)
So that's $2,000,000 total (probably rounded off) -
$1,100,000 EACH -
$100,000 EACH -
$77,500 =
Net LOSS of $477,500 (or possibly $277,500 if the "$2,000,000 profit" was rounded off from $2,200,000.
Yeah right -like AOL really got hurt with the spam.
I doubt if time warner who owns AOL is ever gonna reimburse
there customers, that company is just to greedy.
Customers should sue Time warner to get there money.
All time warner is gonna do is buy out more cable companys.
They own roadrunner/AOL/brighthouse/Parts of comcast.
This is just to name a few.
I see a class action suit coming on if you all want your piece
of the pie.
My opinion is that the judge should have ordered Time warner
to give the money to the customers who complained.
Think that greedy company is gonna do that ????
Highly unlikely..