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Meet Millionaire Spammer Jeremy Jaynes
prostoalex writes "Associated Press profiles Jeremy Jaynes, charged with sending out unsolicited e-mail messages, who just got a 9-year jail term recommendation from the state jury. With the help of 16 'high-speed' lines (Associated Press probably meant T1s) Jaynes would send out 10 million e-mails a day. His best month in terms of gross income netted him $750,000. Acccording to the article, 'In a typical month, prosecutors said during the trial, Jaynes might receive 10,000 to 17,000 credit card orders, thus making money on perhaps only one of every 30,000 e-mails he sent out. But he earned $40 a pop, and the undertaking was so vast that Jaynes could still pull in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead, McGuire said. "When you're marketing to the world, there are enough idiots out there" who will be suckered in, McGuire said in an interview.'"
So with this kind of high-profile "financial report", are we going to see more spammers? Seriously speaking, my spam count hasn't dropped a bit since the elimination of these 10 million spams a day. It's like that terrorism saying: If you killed Bin Laden, two more will come out to replace him.
This Jeremy is reportedly earning $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead.
Imagine if you can work 1 year without getting caught, and wisely transfered your incomes to safe place, you are basically earning $1 million a year by sitting in the prison doing some workouts, or even get a law degree specialised in anti-spam. And you wonder why there are more spams everyday?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
who just got a 9-year jail term recommendation from the state jury
9 years in the slammer getting unsolicited gifts from Bubba? Wow! I bet at least one of the jurors purchased a penis enlarger and, let's say, wasn't totally satisfied with the results...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The "McGuire" quoted here is the Attorney General, not the spammer. He's the one who states that he thinks people are idiots, not the spammer.
:-)
Mind you, the spammer will know that people are idiots
Prosecutors don't know how he got the lists, though McGuire said the AOL names matched a list of 92 million addresses an AOL software engineer has been charged with stealing. However Jaynes got them, they were particularly valuable because AOL customers and eBay users by their very nature have already shown a willingness to engage in e-commerce.
Or particularly valuable because AOL users are, well, AOL users?
Some additional details, including a charming picture, are available in his hometown paper:
1 41513c.html
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1828341p-8
Yes - they were T1 lines.
$750k a month is better than I think 99.9% of this entire world's population. And to think... only 9 years in jail.
You're the second person in this thread who expresses this point of view. Interesting (and sad) society we live in were it's deemed an acceptable option to serve time in jail as a paid job...
Personally, I'd rather starve in the street than go one minute in jail. I couldn't bear the shame...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
$40 per order
1 order per every 30,000 spam
est. $24,000,000 net worth = 600,000 orders = 18,000,000,000 spams
9 years jail time = 283,824,000 seconds
So the ratio is 63.4 spam messages per second of prison time
If enough of them start going to jail, it'll probably help. Also as spam filters get better, profits will go down. The spam system we used to have was maybe 50% efficient, meaning about half the spam it recieved, it failed to filter. The new one (Barracuda) is probably 90-95% efficient. Means where a spammer had to send an average of 2 messages before to get through, now they have to send 10-20. It also shuts down on them much quicker so they can't hit the whole domain as easy.
/. about new spam filtering technologies in the works that are 99.9% or better (some saying 99.999%). If stuff like that hgets popular, it'll be a real bitch. Means you'd have to send between 1,000-1,000,000 e-mails on average to get through.
Now there's been stories on
It's not a winnable war as in someday all spam will suddenly stop and no one will ever try again, but it's winnable in that between lawsuits, jail terms, and better filters we can make it a much less attractive bussiness.
The work-at-home 'offers' are merely "Here is a list of companies. Write to them and see if they'll hire you to work at home"
or stuffing envelopes. What you really end up doing is stuffing envelopes with "Here is how to make money stuffing envelopes. Please send $19.95"
Technically, what you've gotten is what you ordered. But what you ordered was not-quite-legal.
Personally, I'd rather starve in the street than go one minute in jail. I couldn't bear the shame
Spoken like somebody who's never starved on the street.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I bet he's now praying that none of his fellow inmates have purchased penis enlargement pills.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Rove didn't send his junk mail with postage due.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So you're telling me that you think you could teach the same poeple that would actually buy a P3N|S P(_)MP how to properly set up a good email filter? Tell you what.. you try that, I'll start up a spamming business, we'll see who is succesfull. I'm not trying to be an ass, just trying to be realistic.
I wish I could pull in between $30,000 and $750,000 per month while keeping my spending below $50,000 (per month).
I think I can help you out. Send me $50,000 every month and I will send you $30,000 back.
Then I think, 'Oh, wait. Human beings. Guh.' And I get depressed. Because I'm one of them, which makes me just as vulnerable to some new scam that has a bit more intelligence behind it...
You must think in Russian.
EARN $300,000 to $750,000 PER MONTH working from the PRIVACY of your own HOME!!!!
JEREMY JAMES did IT, SO CAN YOU!!!!!!!
THIS is NOT a SCAM, It REALLY works!!!!!
FOR MORE information MAIL TO make_millions.com
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
The sending of the spam was bad enough, the bigger problem is that this putz was engaging in fraud, plain and simple.
His attorney can argue free speech and the unconstitutional aspects of the CAN-SPAM act all he wants, the fact remains that he misled people using spam and sold them products and services of no value whatsoever.
Crime does indeed pay, and this shows it pays handsomely. Now the courts need to AGAIN provide some negative reinforement of that fact and lock this clown away with Andrew Fastow and the rest of the classic white collar criminals.
I'm not scoffing, but think of the postage. Assuming that he could get by with the minimum first class postage, to send out ten million pieces of junk mail a day, would cost him over a hundred million dollars per month, in postage alone. I know the mail system is closed on Sundays, but I'm assuming that he sent spam on Sundays and no one can stop him from putting mail in the box on Sunday (except the vast number of pieces). Also he might be able to get some bulk mail discount, I don't really know how that works, but it would still be a lot. Now add to that paper, envelopes, printing and the resources to stuff and post. On his best month he made $700,000. He'd go broke in a heart beat trying to do that by regular mail.
"When you're marketing to the world, there are enough idiots out there"
Those "idiots" often being trusting elderly people who don't know any better,perhaps your mother, your father, your grandmother.
The other problem lies in getting a refund once you've figured out that you've been ripped off.
Mr. Jeremy Spammer isn't a wholesaler, but merely a cashier. He has no inventory. You send your money to him, he takes his cut and moves the order on the the actual seller. They send you the 'stuff'. You want your money back, but the only contact is who you sent the money to, Mr. Jeremy Spammer. He has since moved onto a different business name and contact info. You have little chance of getting a refund.
J. Spammer has his cut, the wholesaler has their cut, and you have a tube of goo.
Well, you Danish are a beautiful people. However, In the Good ol' "Yew Es a' Aye", we call it the "justice" system for a reason. The historical backing reaching all the way to our present justice system does not believe in punishment for rehabilitation or even to act as a deterrent for crime (although many in this country argue that strong sentencing deters crime, this is complete bunk and there is absolutely NO evidence to support such a theory).
;-)
No, the reason for our criminal punishment system in the US has always been and still is compensation for the victim and/or victim's families, and as a plain simple punishment to those who have done wrong. As you so aptly put, "An eye for an eye", is just the way most people see things here. American's LOVE justice! They love to hate criminals, and they love to punish them. That is, until they find through the varying circumstances of life that they are all of sudden on the other side of the criminal fence, be it a speeding ticket or a drunken bar fight. Why THEN, you've never seen such righteous indignation at the brutal inequality of our laws.
You're way may well be a better way of dealing with crime, but trust me, things are not changing around here anytime soon.
1) Why aren't Visa/Mastercard/AMEX/Etc... also liable in cases like this? It seems like we could put a huge brake on Spam if the credit card companies had some responsibility? Also why would the bank cards tolerate this anyway, the chargeback rate must have been enourmous.
2) How did he hook into the internet with 5 high speed lines that did nothing but send email all day? Surely this traffic could be detected and blocked at the source.
3) How come spam doesn't burn out like a pyramid scheme? Surely the number of gullible people are finite. All of these spammers use the same lists. There has to be a point where every single person spammable has been reached. And surely by the gigantic volume we all get we must be close to that point.
He gets 9 years? I think that's very extreme....It's a very long time. And he only sent out some bulk advertising.
He got 9 years for criminal fraud because he was fraudelently selling goods. Basically everything he sold was a complete scam. He committed literally many many milltions of dollars in fraud (half a million dollars a month on average). The fact that he did this by scamming hundreds and thousands of people out of a small amount of cash instead of the usual where you scam a few people for vast sums of money each doesn't really make a difference in the total amount of harm he caused.
To some extent I agree, 9 years is harsh, but it is in line with the rest of US sentencing, which is equally harsh. Just keep in mind: 9 years in jail for multi-million dollar fraud, not 9 years in jail for bulk advertising.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
How does this sound?
Spammers don't get a fixed prison sentence. Instead, you put them in a prison cell that has an electronic lock with a keypad inside the cell. The combination is, say, twelve digits long, so there's no way in hell the prisoner can ever guess it.
Now you give the spammer a dumb terminal with shell access and an email account (incoming only) and no spam filtering. You send him the same amount of spam each day that he was sending out, except that one of the incoming emails will have the combination to the door. He has to find it himself. Until he can, he's stuck in the cell.
Poetic justice. Just as we regular users have to go to all this trouble with spam filtering and everything else, he'll have to go crazy looking for the combination that will allow him to regain his freedom.