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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!
--
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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.
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.
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
except in this case, the punishment is more for the fraud they committed, rather than just the presence of unsolicited junk mail. you advertise a product for $X and hundreds of people buy your product and it doesn't do Y as you promised, that's fraud. And that's probably why the punishments are as harsh as they are.
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
But we do give jail time to thieves. The spammers are stealing a portion of the bandwidth that I am paying for.
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.
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.
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.
That's because you don't run an ISP, or you haven't had your net connection terminated because a spammer got a zombie process onto your machine & started sending out spam.
There are estimates that at least 40% of all email being sent through the Internet is either spam or attempted spam. Think of how much wasted bandwidth that represents, and how much it costs to maintain the equipment! Are the spammers paying for all of that bandwidth usage? No, they're stealing it (in the straightforward it's-not-available-for-anyone-else sense of the word).
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
Theft can be as little as $0.01 and you'll get 30 days. It's classified as a misdemeanor until it reaches $500 in value, at which point it becomes a felony.
The costs come back to the user because the ISP has to pay for the mail servers, which have to be able to handle the incoming mail and filter systems which require more horsepower, etc. That cost comes down to the end user, so yes, that ~5MB/user per month can get real high real fast.
Imagine 1024 users, so now the spammer's utilized 5GB of bandwidth that they never paid for. And don't spammers hit like 10k+ people at a time.. that's 50+GB of transfer that they don't pay for and no one wants.
-What have you contributed lately?
WHat jail does is put a punishment onto spam. When its merely money, its a gambling game- odds of being caught*money lost-(1-odds of being caught)*money made>0? If so spam.
Now put in jail time- the equation changes. People don't want to go to jail. Where simple fines don't act as a major deterrent, jailtime does. The amount of money to be made has to be very high for jail to be worth the risk. Would you risk jail for 10K? I wouldn't.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
Hey, look at it this way. Maybe after a few trips to a prison shower, enlarged penises might not sound like such an attractive prospect.
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