Tech & Biz

Porn Spammers Get 5 Years

by liamssoft | October 15, 2007 at 02:54 am

984 views | 9 Recommendations | 5 comments

U.S. authorities are thankfully cracking down on spammers, the internet pest who annoy everyone, with recent arrest in the last 5 months.

Two men who made a fortune sending out millions of pornographic spam emails have been sentenced to more than five years in prison.

One of the world's first successful prosecutions against internet 'spammers' has seen two men sentenced to jail in Arizona.

The two, who sent millions of unsolicited pornographic emails and netted millions of dollars, were the subjects of the first US prosecution under new federal anti-spam laws, US Department of Justice officials said.

Jeffrey A Kilbride, of Venice, California, and James R Schaffer, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, bought lists of email addresses and sent the owners links to pornographic websites, prosecutors said. They were convicted of charges including conspiracy, money laundering, fraud and transportation of obscene materials after a three-week trial and were sentenced by a federal judge in Phoenix.

Prosecutors said that after Congress passed a law known as the CAN-SPAM act, cracking down on unsolicited pornographic e-mails, Kilbride and Schaffer tried to make it seem like they were sending messages from abroad by logging in to servers in Amsterdam. But those messages originated from Phoenix, prosecutors said.

Kilbride and Schaffer were also ordered to forfeit $1.3 million (around £650,000).

Three other men charged in the case pleaded guilty and testified against Kilbride and Schaffer.

In a similar earlier case in May of this year, the "Spam King" Robert Soloway was accused of mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. If convicted as charged, he could face decades in prison.

Computer users could see a big fall in junk e-mail after police said they arrested one of the world's most prolific spammers.

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Brian A Kennedy

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 03:39 on October 15th, 2007

Wow, that's a heck of a sentence for spamming -- looks like authorities are finally starting to take spam seriously.

PEP

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 06:09 on October 15th, 2007

liamssoft, good stuff. I wonder what the backstory is--how much money they made off the porno websites,etc. etc. More here than just spamming, I think. The whole thing shows that the internet is, indeed, the new crime territory, as Dateline: NBC has shown re: child sexual predators.

ACE PRESTON

at 06:32 on October 15th, 2007

Good article. We must keep unsolicited pornographic material away from the general public where it could reach children and puritans. This is a positive step towards the limitations of free speech, freedom of expression per personal monetary gain at the expense of others.

"A society without laws protecting it's citizens is a society with a government who does not care for it's people." Ace Preston

Barry Artiste

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 11:13 on October 15th, 2007

liamssoft, Good stuff.

I blame all this Spam on John Cleese's provocative Bra and Panties laying on a desk, as well as the rest of the Monty Python cast whose take on the Citizenry of Canada is an outrage. Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spamitty Spam, Spamitty, Spam.

qwertiepie

at 02:06 on October 16th, 2007

Very Very Cool! Next those people spyware people. Just spend a week trying to remove savetheinformation.com on my laptop - all in the name of promoting an antivirus program... grrr!