Virginia Arrests Man For Spamming

volpe writes "According to this Yahoo news story, Virginia arrested a North Carolina man for spamming in violation of a new state law. He was arrested Thursday afternoon in Raleigh, NC. The story is pretty fresh, so the news details are still pretty thin."

Comments

Interesting stat about Virginia

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an interesting stat about Virginia, and why their anti-spam law seems to be more important than other states laws. 50% of internet traffic flows through the state, thanks to MCI and AOL being headquartered there.

They are right in saying that spam is harming these companies in their state and, strangely enough, have at least tried to do the right thing.

Loudoun Times Story

[fdiskne1]

Since it was a Loudoun County grand jury who handed down the indictments, Loudoun Times has more details. According to their article:

Kilgore made the announcement at America Online headquarters in Dulles, along with officials from AOL, MCI and UUNet.

The state law makes spam criminal in Virginia if any part of the spam transactions occur in any Virginia locality. Kilgore said the spam in these two cases was sent "through servers located in Virginia."

And while the announcement came in the gleaming AOL headquarters, Kilgore declined to be specific about the location of the servers in Loudoun County or provide further details, citing the coming prosecutions.

Authorities in Raleigh, N.C., obtained a search warrant and arrested Jeremy Jaynes Thursday morning and charged him with four felony counts of using fraudulent means to transmit unsolicited, bulk e-mail in violation of the Virginia's anti-spam law, Kilgore said.

Each felony count carries a punishment of one to five years in prison and a fine of up to $2,500, or both.

Jaynes also goes by the aliases Jeremy James or Gaven Stubberfield, Kilgore said. The Register of Known Spam Operations lists Stubberfield as the eighth-most prolific spammer on its Web site www.spamhaus.com, according to Kilgore.

The indictment alleges Jaynes sent spam that exceeded 10,000 e-mails per day on three separate days in July, and that he sent more than 100,000 e-mails during a 30-day period in July and August, Kilgore said.

The state law makes it a felony to send unsolicited, bulk e-mail by fraudulent means such as removing the sender information, thus preventing recipients from replying or knowing who sent the e-mail. The spam is illegal if the volume exceeds 10,000 e-mails in 24 hours or 100,000 in 30 days, or if the revenue from the spam exceeds $1,000 or if the total revenue from the spam transmitted to any Internet service provider exceeds $50,000.

More Info

[jetkust]

The man arrested, Jeremy Jaynes (aka Gaven Stubberfield, and Jeremy James), was listed as the worlds 8th worst spammer on http://www.spamhaus.org/index.lasso. Spamhaus is a site that tracks the activity of spammers around the world. It also lists USA,China,And South Korea as the worst spamming countries.

Re:Sic Semper Spammeris

[Sylver Dragon]

Well, techinically, the maximum sentance would be 20 years. He is, afterall, being charged on four separate violations, each carrying a 1 to 5 year sentance. So he could be out in as little as 4 years, assuming he is found guilty on all 4 charges. Not to mention that, with good behaviour, parole, etc, he'll probably be out in 1 to 2. The 20 year figure, is really just an outside number, its not likely, but is created because of the multipul counts against him. Not to mention that the district attorney is probably doing a standard, throw every possible thing at them, and see what sticks. Relax, its not as bad as the quick blurb made it out to be.