First Felony Spam Trial Gets Underway

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First Felony Spam Trial Gets Underway

Posted by timothy on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @05:23PM from the your-assets-are-grass dept.

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Three people faced a judge in Virginia today to answer felony charges for allegedly sending millions of spams touting to AOL users. The defendants are being tried under a 2003 Virginia anti-spam law that prosecutors say is the harshest of its kind in the nation. If convicted on all counts they each face up to 15 years in prison. Prosecutors allege that one of the defendants attempted to send 7.7 million spams in a single day that touted penny stocks and software to let people work at home as a "FedEx refund processor". Defense lawyers contend that the prosecutors will be unable to prove that the defendants intentionally masked the origin of the spam nor that it was unsolicited. The defense was also concerned that the jury pool might not be objective if it was filled with AOL users."

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AOL by over_exposed · 2004-10-26 17:28 · Score: 4, Funny

I'd be concerned if the jury pool was filled with AOL users too... the ruling would probably be something along the lines of:

Judge: Has the jury reached a verdict?
Spokesperson: We have.
Judge: How do you find?
Spokesperson: LOL! gUiLtY like totally! ROFL! wanna cyber?

--
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
1. Re:AOL by sepluv · 2004-10-26 17:51 · Score: 1
  
  At least you wouldn't have a hung jury...
  
  --
  Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
  [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
2. Re:AOL by Hank+Reardon · 2004-10-26 18:14 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Or even...
  
  Juror #1: Guilty...
  
  Juror #2: Me too!
  
  Juror #3: Me too!
  
  ...
  
  --
  There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
3. Re:AOL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-26 18:23 · Score: 0
  
  as long as you have a well-hung judge
4. Re:AOL by Lord+Prox · 2004-10-26 22:44 · Score: 1
  
  7.7 million spams times 15 years... hmmmm isn't that like 115.5 million years in prison. I like the sound of that...
SEC by austad · 2004-10-26 17:35 · Score: 1

Well, if they don't get a conviction for the above via the spam laws, they can certainly go after them for a pump and dump scam with those penny stocks.

Sending millions of emails with the intent to make tons of people buy a stock to drive it's price up is illegal. All they would need to do is show that the person had purchased the stock when it was low, or put some sort of order on it. Or just prove intent. The SEC frowns upon this practice. People who are being investigated for it get their assets frozen, and that makes me very happy.

Spammers with money they can't use, it's brilliant.

--
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
1. Re:SEC by Lord+Kano · 2004-10-26 17:45 · Score: 1
  
  Sending millions of emails with the intent to make tons of people buy a stock to drive it's price up is illegal.
  
  Only if there is a misrepresentation or fraudulent intent involved.
  
  If the email consisted of "I bought this stock with my own money because I'm convinced that it will go up. I think that you should purchase it too."
  
  Where is the SEC violation?
  
  LK
  
  --
  "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
2. Re:SEC by austad · 2004-10-26 18:01 · Score: 1
  
  That wouldn't be fraudulent if you sent it to a few of your friends, but when you send it to 7.7 million complete strangers, there's definitely some intent there.
  
  I used to have to deal with these scams at a previous job, and I talked to the SEC regularly.
  
  --
  Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
3. Re:SEC by Lord+Kano · 2004-10-26 18:22 · Score: 1
  
  I used to have to deal with these scams at a previous job, and I talked to the SEC regularly.
  
  And I'm sure that the SEC took every one of them seriously. But as long as there is no misrepresentation, there isn't anything that the SEC can do.
  
  LK
  
  --
  "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
4. Re:SEC by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-26 18:53 · Score: 1
  
  But as long as there is no misrepresentation, there isn't anything that the SEC can do.
  It's pretty much impossible to do a pump and dump without misrepresentation, duh.
5. Re:SEC by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-28 00:30 · Score: 0
  
  drive it's price up
  
  "its".
Impartial jury? by c.r.o.c.o · 2004-10-26 17:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

The only way they would get an impartial jury would be if somehow they find 12 people without an internet connection. Regardless of the provider, EVERYBODY has to deal with spam in one way or another.

But this is one case where I wouldn't mind having the defendents tarred and feathered...
1. Re:Impartial jury? by Seumas · 2004-10-26 21:07 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Putting people in jail for spamming is just stupid. Reserve jail for people who commit violent crimes. Robbery, murder, rape, child molestation, assault and battery, burglary, hit and run and drunk driving.
  
  Stop putting people in jail for smoking a joint or sending spam.
  
  Does someone, regardless of the amount of spam they send, really deserve a decade or two in prison? Take out the "I hate spam" part of it. Just based on crime versus punishment. Does this punishment really fit that crime? Considering 80% of the spam was probably filtered directly to /dev/null and even if the remaining 20% took one second from each person's life to handle, is taking one second of time from a few million people's lives worth sending someone to prison for 20% of *their* life?
  
  If so, I want to start sticking advertisers and door to door solicitors in prison, right now.
  
  Prison sentences for the heavy-handed fraud which was mentioned, makes sense. That's an existing crime that deserves punishment. But not for faking a damn SMTP header and sending it to people who didn't want it.
2. Re:Impartial jury? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-26 21:16 · Score: 0
  
  SCREW THAT!
  
  i'm tired of fucking spam and these guys should rot in jail
3. Re:Impartial jury? by Seumas · 2004-10-26 21:22 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I'm tired of a lot of criminal activities, too. That doesn't mean I support putting everyone that commits a crime that I dislike in a prison cell. I can't stand pot-heads, but I don't want to send them to prison. I can't stand dead-beat dads, but I don't support putting them behind bars. Zero-tolerance style policies are an excuse to avoid excercising common sense and engaging in some very important critical thinking. Of course each situation is different and applying some brain-dead mandate is itself a miscarriage of justice and, I would suggest, robs citizens of their right to due process.
  
  And if you feel that a spammer deserves a decade or two behind bars, then how can anyone possibly justify any other sentance for people like Kenneth Lay and the criminal bastards behind Enron, MCI, Martha Stewart and other corporations short of life in prison? Is some schmuck who sent out a few million spams - even if it's part of a pyramid scheme - deserving of a punishment that is ten-fold that of people who defraud thousands of life-long employees of their retirement?
4. Re:Impartial jury? by ceejayoz · 2004-10-26 23:37 · Score: 1
  
  Dude, Martha Stewart made like $50,000, and then watched her company shares sink $50,000,000 in the ensuing media circus. Hardly defrauding thousands of employees like Lay & Co...
5. Re:Impartial jury? by GigsVT · 2004-10-27 00:54 · Score: 1
  
  taking one second of time from a few million people's lives worth sending someone to prison for 20% of *their* life?
  
  There should be some punishment though. Some serious punishment. Maybe not years in prison, but definitly some prison.
  
  1 second from millions of people is 30+ man days. If you stole a month's pay from your company, you'd be in trouble, so how is it much different, just because the theif spread it out?
  
  --
  I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
6. Re:Impartial jury? by GeckoX · 2004-10-27 01:14 · Score: 1
  
  She initially made a lot more than $50,000.
  She then got caught and nailed to the wall. Rightly so.
  
  --
  No Comment.
7. Re:Impartial jury? by dprust · 2004-10-27 02:21 · Score: 1
  
  If Martha Stewert had a shining, charismatic personality, she would have never seen a day in prison.
8. Re:Impartial jury? by anthony_dipierro · 2004-10-27 03:23 · Score: 1
  
  There should be some punishment though.
  
  In civil court, maybe. Punitive damages, sure. But putting someone in jail for what is essentially a nuisance? No, I don't buy it.
  
  Sure, you can go to jail for other nuisances, obscenity, public nudity, panhandling, public intoxication. But those are bad laws too.
9. Re:Impartial jury? by GigsVT · 2004-10-27 04:00 · Score: 1
  
  This isn't like those crimes you listed. The ones you listed are not going to cause anyone to directly lose money, they are mostly victimless.
  
  It's more like someone running a garbage company and dumping garbage illegally on your property. Except they just dump one bag of garbage on every lot in town. If a company did that, they would be in jail in a second for trespass and illegal dumping.
  
  Spamming is not a victimless crime.
  
  --
  I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
10. Re:Impartial jury? by anthony_dipierro · 2004-10-27 05:30 · Score: 1
  
  The ones you listed are not going to cause anyone to directly lose money, they are mostly victimless.
  
  While they might not cause anyone to lose money, they are most certainly not victimless.
  
  It's more like someone running a garbage company and dumping garbage illegally on your property. Except they just dump one bag of garbage on every lot in town.
  
  I don't think that analogy captures the fact that the whole point of an email account is to receive email. It's more like putting ads on people's windshields. Is that illegal? Probably, but people shouldn't be going to jail for it.
  
  If a company did that, they would be in jail in a second for trespass and illegal dumping.
  
  In most states you can't go to jail for simple tresspass, and this might not even qualify for that. I don't know about illegal dumping, but it certainly shouldn't be a felony. I'd even argue against any jail time, unless there was an injunction in place.
  
  Spamming is not a victimless crime.
  
  I never said it was. What I said was that it was a nuisance crime. Nuisance crimes have victims, but I don't think you should go locking up everyone who bothers someone.
11. Re:Impartial jury? by ceejayoz · 2004-10-27 05:39 · Score: 1
  
  She initially made a lot more than 50,000.
  
  Nope...
  
  http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/05/news/companies/m ar tha_verdict/
  
  "Stewart avoided a loss of about $51,000 by selling nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone stock on Dec. 27, 2001, rather than the next trading day, when the stock tumbled after regulators rejected the company's application for a key cancer drug."
12. Re:Impartial jury? by camperslo · 2004-10-27 09:52 · Score: 1
  
  A punishment of 15 years works out to only about 61.4 seconds for each of the 7.7 million people spammed.
  
  - - - - - - -
  Let's forget about WMD for a bit and tackle WMA, WMV and SPAM!
13. Re:Impartial jury? by jbridge21 · 2004-10-28 05:44 · Score: 1
  
  Stop putting people in jail for smoking a joint or sending spam.
  
  Dude, nobody has gone to jail yet for spam. (I haven't been keeping track, maybe it's one or two. Doesn't change the argument.)
  
  Three quarters of a million people were arrested for marijuana posession last year alone.
  
  Sending spammers to jail will not add any noticeable stress on the system for quite some time, if ever. What percentage of the population is likely to engage in spamming, compared to the number likely to engage in pot smoking, or even violence? Right.
As a coworker just said, by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-26 17:50 · Score: 0

'Burn the motherfucker at the stake!'
On defense worry over AOL by tod_miller · 2004-10-26 19:22 · Score: 1

If someone was facing felony charges for illegal wiretapping or stealing phones, would the defense be able to contend that only hicks without phones can be in the jury?

If the user only wiretapped fooBell could the defense say fooBell customers cannot be in jury? no I don't think so.

It is stupid, spam is spam is spam, unless it spam spam spam spam spam spam beans and spam, but again , we haven't got beans today.

I hope they give them the CHAIR!!! yes the electric one! and stream it over the internet...

Hang on, I'd bet someone would spam me for tickets to watch it!

No, the chair is too good for them, just bung them in a prison, and let thier asses take the punishment!

If you are a psychopathic re-offender in the same state, with a penchant for man-ass, please watch any newspaper and tv coverage to get a good look at thier faces. {although it might not be thier faces you are interested in).

--
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
1. Re:On defense worry over AOL by skinfitz · 2004-10-26 19:46 · Score: 1
  
  If someone was facing felony charges for illegal wiretapping or stealing phones, would the defense be able to contend that only hicks without phones can be in the jury?
  
  If the user only wiretapped fooBell could the defense say fooBell customers cannot be in jury? no I don't think so.
  
  It is stupid, spam is spam is spam, unless it spam spam spam spam spam spam beans and spam, but again , we haven't got beans today.
  
  No no no - it's nothing to do with that - they will be worried that AOL users are too dumb to turn up and if they do may not understand what's going on.
2. Re:On defense worry over AOL by afd8856 · 2004-10-26 21:01 · Score: 1
  
  Extremist! That's just a guy trying to make money, he didn't murder or rape anyone. I don't think he deserves at all the sentence that you propose. Think about this: he send you an email that you didn't ask for. You want to put him 15 years in jail for this. I don't like spam. I think spammers should be fined, but their act does not justify spending hard years in prison. Even if they tried to scam. Prison should be reserved to the criminals and drug dealers.
  
  --
  I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
3. Re:On defense worry over AOL by tod_miller · 2004-10-26 21:19 · Score: 1
  
  Oh dear I forgot that < and > don't work in /. - so you didn't see my sarcasm tags...
  
  no hang on, I thought they were obvious.
  
  Yes, I agree 15 years would cost the tax payer too much, just sling a rope over the dock and pull the chair away as the sentence is read :-)
  
  Just kidding! Fines for sure, and the defense lawers shouldn't be allowed to profit from this... I dunno... there is something about the people who send spam will figure a way of making money from getting convicted...
  
  --
  #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
4. Re:On defense worry over AOL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-28 02:18 · Score: 0
  
  so you are saying fraud shouldnt be a prisonable offense?
  
  oh that would be great, i would have a new line of work.
Could they find defense lawyers... by tod_miller · 2004-10-26 19:27 · Score: 1

Or a judge who wasn't totally pissed off at spam, and being ineffectual at dealing with it?

These guys are the first dude on the firing line with 10 years of pent up frustration.

Perhaps the Judge is modestly endowed and got suckered up by some enlargment pill spam, WHO KNOWS!

[ok could be a judgess, how sexist]

In German do they use er/inn for the title Judge? hmmmm.

I clicked my first email authentication link [someone had an email using antispam somthingorother] which I thought was a good idea.

UNTIL someone sends these fake authorisation notes [you sent me an email, click here to prove you are real] alongside a simple smtp email checker and link clicker.

The prove link could go anywhere!

--
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Shoot them by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-26 19:36 · Score: 0

I want capital punishment to those bastards, who live a meaningless low life.
15 years is unduly lenient by Andy_R · 2004-10-26 21:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

if it takes an AOL user an average of just 3 seconds of their time to see this, decide what to do with it and delete it, then 7.7 million such mails waste about 267 days of AOL users's time.

If a spammer was this active for more than 21 days, then they are going to be spending less time in jail than they stole from other people.

--
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
1. Re:15 years is unduly lenient by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-26 22:54 · Score: 0
  
  There's no law against wasting people's time. The guy selling "x-ray glasses" in the back of Boys-Life magazine (do they even print that anymore?) wastes your time. Junkmail in your mailbox wastes your time. Jehovah's Witnesses waste your time. Door to door political campaign activists waste your time. Kids selling candy for school waste your time. Advertisements in the newspaper waste your time. Movies that weren't worth the $10 you paid to see them aren't worth your time.
  
  LOTS of things are a waste of time. Sometimes you willingly subject yourself to the waste of time and other times you are imposed upon. That doesn't give you the right to mete out prison time simply because they took two seconds of your precious life.
2. Re:15 years is unduly lenient by Tanktalus · 2004-10-27 02:34 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, I'd say there now are laws against wasting peoples' time - if you do it with spam. What a wonderful, evolving civil law system we have. (I'll let everyone's personal bias on the issue determine if I'm being sarcastic or not with that last sentence ;->)
3. Re:15 years is unduly lenient by anthony_dipierro · 2004-10-27 03:27 · Score: 1
  
  if it takes an AOL user an average of just 3 seconds of their time to see this, decide what to do with it and delete it
  
  But it certainly doesn't. Many of the AOL users don't even bother checking their AOL email, and those that do usually know what to delete just by looking at the header, we're talking more like 1/3 second.
  
  If a spammer was this active for more than 21 days, then they are going to be spending less time in jail than they stole from other people.
  
  So when you net it out I guess they gained time.
  
  Err, except that you can't "steal" time.
Felony? by anthony_dipierro · 2004-10-27 03:15 · Score: 1

Sending email is a felony now? Where has this country gone?
1. Re:Felony? by DankNinja · 2004-10-27 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  Sending email is a felony now? Where has this country gone?
  
  They're probably actually reading the article.
What does manslaughter get you? by kentheteck · 2004-10-27 11:20 · Score: 1

Is it more or less than 15 years?

How about grand theft?

Attempted murder?

The Enron guys?

Betty Loren-Maltese(president from Cicero, IL- stole millions, is in the mob, etc.)
1. Re:What does manslaughter get you? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-28 02:22 · Score: 0
  
  that is what happens when you get charged with 7.7 million counts of a crime.
  
  just like if you murdered 4000 people, you would concievably do something like 160,000 years.
  
  each count comes with a penalty.
  each count is a seperate crime
Jail time for spammers. by infiniter · 2004-10-28 09:06 · Score: 1

I think it's appropriate... if there's a widely published law that says "NO SPAM... blah blah blah" then you have to follow it... there's no argument that it's a matter of free speech. SPAM is like door to door marketing, only the guys are lined up at your door all the way around the block twice. ...And Dubya funded stem cell research using existing cell lines and illegalized the harvest of new cells from embryos. I don't see a contradiction there.