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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?"
Goes to the slammer together.
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
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
A few years back, a guy stole a truckload of spam from a Hormel factory and got convicted of several felonies including distrubiting stolen spam.
I find it insane the amount of internet bandwidth that spam consumes. The harder we crack down on this sort of thing the less of a problem we will have. In sinapore a fellow got whipped with a cane a few times when he spray painted a car; I bet he won't be doing it again any time soon.
What ? Don't you think there are other crimes that deserve such a real punishment ? Spam is easily filtered with spamassassin and friends (I should know, it gets rid of thousands of spams daily for me), jail should be for murderers, rapers, corrupted politicians, etc.
Agreed --- until the courts demonstrate that they believe spam to be a serious offence, the spammers will not be deterred. And I'm afraid that passing down a custodial sentence is the only way that will be demonstrated.
You said "jail time". Is that some sort of newfangled lawyer shorthand for "go all Vlad-the-Impaler on them in front of Genuity or Verio headquarters pour encourager les autres?"
Because if all you mean is "locked in a small room, given free room and board for a few years, subject only to the occasional prison rape", then you'd better make yourself scarce. This here's Slashdot, and we don't take kindly to yuppified murketeering types who publicly express sympathy for spammers 'round these parts.
Is the editor seriously advocating jail time for spamming? I'm all for punishment, but I think taking every piece of property and dime of wealth is going to make a much bigger impact than sending them to a place that fosters the criminal mentality rather than reforming it. Reserve jail for hardcore felons that perform a physically harmful crime to someone else.
For a spelling mistake? That's a little harsh.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
The credit card orders make this definitely a fraud case, but if that same punishment was applicable without the fraud... I can't lookup the law as the article doesn't mention it, but I'm very afraid.
SIG: HUP
One hopes that this will have an effect, if not deterring, at least taking one offender out of the equation(if jailed/executed).
This tidbit was less promising: "Prosecutors compared Jaynes and DeGroot, both of the Raleigh, N.C., area, to modern-day snake-oil salesmen who used the Internet to peddle junk like a 'FedEx refund processor' that supposedly allowed people to earn $75 an hour while working from home."
People are still biting on frauds of all sort, and the internet has become the prime location for it.
There is no real solution to stupidity, at least until designer babies are a reality.
http://persianews.on.nimp.org/?u=Tar_Baby
While I sympathize with the cries of "Off with their heads", I don't think jail time is really appropriate in this case. I think we need to save our prisons for people who have done something Really Bad, not something Really Annoying.
The whole idea of "lock 'em up and throw away the key" has been beaten into our heads by politicians playing on our fears. So we automatically suggest spammers go to jail with other terrible offenders, like the guy who got caught with a baggie of wacky weed at a Grateful Dead cover band's show.
Make the punishment fit the crime. Big financial penalty, to make up for the bandwidth they wasted. I'd like to see direct reimbursement of the victims, but if you really sent the guy $39.95 for a stupid get-rich-quick scheme, maybe you're better off with the life lesson instead of the cash.
Or kill two birds with one stone(r). Punish the "criminal" potheads and the spammers at the same time. Send nonviolent drug-related parolees to the spammers' house on a regular (but unpredictable) schedule to hit them up for money for weed.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Now that I have mentioned it, I trust Slashdotters will elaborate on the porn possibilities.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Or pick another state, please. I first read that as "More spam cases for Viagra". Woops.
On one hand, I see 9 years in jail for sending nuisance email as excessive punishment, but on the other, they were making money committing fraud.
Since, however, they were tried simply on sending spam and NOT fradulent sales, I find this very disturbing. If the law they were being tried on was sending junk mail, does the content of the mail actually matter under this law? Why would the judge allow that information to be even considered?
It's kind of like trying someone for stealing a car, and saying it's a worse crime because he had a crack rock in his pocket. Unless the law stipulated stronger punishment for having drugs in a stolen car, it should be left out of the case.
What a pity Hannibal Lecter is a character in a movie. I'm pretty sure that an appropriate sentence should involve him, and a bottle of chianti.
See what I've been reading.
According to the article "In one month alone, Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders, each for $39.95". These are the people who need to be slapped. They are making spamming and scamming profitable. I'm sorry, but losing 40 bucks isn't enough punishment for this.
But why is the rum gone?
If you read the article, this really was a case about FRAUD. The sentences were handed down heavily because they defrauded people of almost $40k. Spam just happened to be the medium they chose to do it in.
I really doubt that, had these folks run a legit business and didn't defraud people, that they'd have gotten such heavy sentences..
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
What about theft? The total costs of spam are enormous, even without scams. Many, many millions of dollars per year.They suck up bandwidth and disk space, and waste millions of person-hours each year that could have bene used for something productive.
They steal bandwidth. They steal disk space. They steal our time, and time costs dearly. You can't replace it.
So until you can find a way to force them to pay restitution to everyone they've robbed, don't try to paint them as harmless.
Now add in scammers, pornographers, and all the other crap, and they deserve much, much worse than they're getting. What, you don't think porn matters? When it gets into my house, in front of me, or my wife, or my kids, it damn well matters. If you try to walk into my house and expose us to porn, you might very well leave in an ambulance if you aren't awfully quick on your feet.
How about another cliche?
In one month alone, Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders, each for $39.95, for the processor.
In other words, stupid is as stupid does.
10,000 people fell for it. Isn't that rather depressing? Ok, we probably saw vote counts for the election and wondered how so many people could be so wrong, but 10,000 people trying to order something for $40 advertised in spam, that tells you this isn't exactly a nation of rocket scientists.
You can't seriously fight spam until people stop being so damn stupid.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
Considering the crimes involved (not just spam but fraud), and that all the defendents made millions (and the property records prove it), it's damn sad that one got off completely and pne that was convicted got only 3 "fines" of $2500 each. She must be laughing here head off now.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The U.S. pretends that it's system of justice is somehow too civilized to allow caneing like Singapore does, but I question that.
Caneing is quite aversive to the criminal. I can't imagine they'll decide they don't mind being caned again. Unlike prison, it doesn't further alienate the criminal by re-socializing them to a prison environment, then expect them to be well adjusted members of society when released (or rather pretend to expect).
Given the things that are allowed (sometimes encouraged) to happen in prison and the minimal to non-existant corrective measures, it's easily more barbaric than a caneing and certainly more expensive.
Summary, take away the spoils of their crime and cane them.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, I do believe they should be jailed for property crimes.
What is to deter them? Just like oil companies, they are fined a fee that doesn't equate to a penny on the dollar for what they are raking in. That isn't even a slap on the wrist and is not even a deterrant for doing the crime.
I hate to say it, yes even as a Texan, a few examples must be made. And while I do not believe in the death penalty, I believe that spammers and anyone that writes/promotes or profits in anyway whatsoever spyware/malware/adware should be shot. Any time you spend feeling the guilt towards those individuals will be spent cleaning up the messes they've made.
A long jail sentence is excessive.
Two years in jail and 15 years of being forced to use the address "myname@convictedspammer.va.us" for all your email is an appropriate punishment.
Even sweeter - you have to use a 110bps teletype to access your mail.
Since trash is trash, for community service, you can clean up trash along the highways.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
These people are being punished for annoying AOHell. Ordinary con men don't get 9 year in prison. There's not enough room there for violent people as is. Con men come and go from jail, till they flunk the three time loser limit. With so many ordinary frauds walking the street you have to wonder what this case represents. This is more AOHell flexing it's muscles than it is public outrage and it's unlikely to protect ordinary citizens.
I got to learn a lot about ordinary con men when one defrauded my mother in law's business. He burned her, her suppliers and her customers with bogus charges and every other manner or fraud in the few months he worked there, including a few spiteful last minute things like putting a chain of paperclips into the fax machine. He almost put her out of business and cost lots of people much more than he pocketed himself. The bozo ended up in jail for some other fraud he'd been involved in, but never spent more than a few months in jail. He'd been doing that kind of thing all his life, but he always gets out of jail and moves on. You can't level fines on the loser because he never has any savings. It's disgusting, but the damage such people do is not great enough for there to be widespread public knowledge and outrage.
Nine years in prison is the kind of punishment doled out by a company with Time Warner money and influence. It's much like the RIAA file sharing cases, where the victim loses their life savings as a "settlement". Sure, those people don't deserve the fines and frauds do, but there are a lot of other frauds that have yet to be punished. I'd like to see fraud taken more seriously but when it comes time to build more jails, AOL controlled media will remind us how expensive that is and nothing will change. Ordinary fraud does not harm big business, in fact it helps reduce start ups and other competition, so it will not be fought seriously.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
put 'em in a cell with a guy who's taken one too many enlargement pills.
This is silly, they are considering the motivation. These people can afford computers so they are not starving therefore any crime of a financial nature by these people is pure greed.
There are alternative justifications for crimes such as rape.
Some people take those crimes increadibly personally, (which may be a sideeffect of the propaganda used to discourage negative behavior).
Spammers are engaging in an utterly destructive and antisocial crime, their chances of rehabilitation using common methods is almost nill.
If it were possible to have a perfect determination of the antisocial motivation of an individual spammer the penalty should be INCREADIBLY harsh.
Martha Stewart is doing xx? months of federal prison time for reacting to what someone told her in order to save money that was hers, so I don't think 9 years is too much for this case. While spam might not seem worth 9 years to someone else, I prefer to look at it and estimate how much of a negative impact this person is having on society as a whole. With this view in mind, spamming millions is more of a negative drain than beating someone bloody and cutting off one of their fingers. Sending them to prison probably saves American society more than it costs to hold them there and is a great deterent for other spammers. Anyone who sends spam obviously knows how much people hate it. To me, stealing time is no different than stealing property.
Bubba: What're y'in for, kid?
... *gulp* ... nah, but I can get you a nice deal on an interest-only mortgage...
Jeremy: Lotsa stuff - Viagra, mostly.
Bubba: Viagra? You mean "V14gr4"?
Jeremy: Yeah, that's right. And porn, I did a lot of porn.
Bubba: Pr0n, huh? Got any on ya? I could even use an "18+thumbnail" about now. This place makes even somethin' like you look good.
Jeremy: Nah
Bubba: MORTGAGES! Come here, you sunnabitch, I knew I didn't like yer looks!
Jeremy: Guards! Help!!!
Guard: Yeah, *yawn* I'll be right there. Right after I clean out my 'caughtspam' folder.
sigs, as if you care.
Have to say it -- has anyone else noticed that all the spammers (in the US, at least) are from red states?
Spam costs the world many millions of dollars in lost time, wasted bandwidth, and paying for services to deal with it. On top of that, most spam is in some way fraudulent. Some of it (that this spammer was apparently guilty of) was porn sent to children's email accounts.
Perhaps each individual message isn't much of a problem in and of itself, but when taken in aggrigate, the millions of messages he sent cost thousands of bucks to business and individuals. Children were exposed to things that their parents didn't want them to see. People were conned out of money and who knows what their credit card numbers were used for!
Perhaps when you think of it like this, you will see the beach rather than the individual grains of sand and realize that this man, and his accomplices are CRIMINALS and that the outrage isn't that he got a lengthy sentence but that the other escaped with too light of a fine.
Perhaps that last part is conjecture on my part, I do not know as well as the court what her role was in this criminal enterprise. But I find myself wishing that they were prosicuted under the RICO act.
About 10 years ago in Denver, a man was arrested as he staggered out of a meat-packer's warehouse with a heavy box of meat. It turned out to be beef rectums.
Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener...
rj
Preferably, time in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
For a spelling mistake? That's a little harsh.
You must be new here.
This sig is intentionally blank
I sure hope posession isn't illegal like the distribution is. I've got a mega stash dude
- Thomas;
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!