Siblings Guilty of Spam Felony, Partner Acquitted

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?"

Comments

Yes, 9-Year Prison Term

[fembots]

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 and win Half-Life 2

Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term

[zx75]

"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 ;).

Re:Yes, 9-Year Prison Term

[deblau]

Um. So if you read the Virginia statutes (which I can't get to right now, but are available here), 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...

Prosecutor can't appeal to raise the sentence...

[Goobermunch]

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

Sentence can be lengthened, sort of

[davidwr]

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:Another Cliche?

[RealAlaskan]

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 ours, there are going to be a lot of idiots, even if the average is pretty high.

Re:Stretching it a bit...

[bani]

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.

Re:Please ?

[spuzzzzzzz]

I moved from the US to Australia five years ago. I found it absolutely incredible that here, you can put a little sign on your mailbox saying "No junk mail" and they won't give you any junk mail. And the cost of sending mail is about the same as in the US.