First Spammer Convicted Under CAN-SPAM Law

eldavojohn writes "Spammer Jeffrey Brett Goodin has been convicted under the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act, the first person in the U.S. prosecuted successfully under the law. He is facing a sentence of up to 101 years in a federal prison after being found guilty of numerous illegal acts. According to prosecutors, Goodin was convicted on multiple counts in addition to the CAN-SPAM conviction, including wire fraud, unauthorized use of credit cards, misuse of the AOL trademark and attempted witness harassment. From the article: 'The law forbids e-mail marketers from sending false or misleading messages and requires them to provide recipients with a way to opt out of receiving future mailings. During trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Goodin used several compromised Internet accounts to send e-mails to America Online users. The e-mails appeared to be from the company's billing department and told customers to update their billing information or lose service.'"

Comments

Over the top

[LiquidCoooled]

If this is relating to computer fraud how the fuck can they justify over 100 years of punishment?
Rapists and murderers get less.

I don't like spam but ffs that is so harsh.

Re:Over the top

[garcia]

If this is relating to computer fraud how the fuck can they justify over 100 years of punishment? Rapists and murderers get less.

Rapists and murderers usually rape and murder less people. This douchebag probably targeted millions of people.

Re:Over the top

[garcia]

So if a reasonably well known person, like a media personality annoys enough people, you can use the death penalty on him?

You are confusing several important things here:

1. This has nothing to do w/the death penalty.

2. He hasn't been sentenced yet. That happens on 6/11. Just because he's been convicted doesn't mean his sentence will be anything close to 101 years.

3. Fraud isn't just "annoying".

Re:Over the top

[inviolet]

If this is relating to computer fraud how the fuck can they justify over 100 years of punishment?
Rapists and murderers get less.

Consider the total social cost of this dirtbag's activities...

A billion spam emails * 1000 bytes each * ~15 hops each = ~15 TB of traffic

A billion spam emails * ~33% acceptance by POP3 servers * 1000 bytes each * ~2 weeks stored on disk = ~5 TB-days of disk storage

A billion spam emails * ~33% acceptance by POP3 servers * 10% penetration of spam filters * 5 seconds for the user to read and delete = ~5 person-years reading and deleting

Plus all the intangible costs, such as legitimate emails lost due to spam traffic overflowing the mail servers, and people losing money on scam products and the like.

I'd say it's perfectly fair to charge the guy exactly what he cost society: 10 years in jail per billion emails sent. How many billions do you suppose he's sent in his lifetime?

Not to mention all the other, more concrete frauds he was involved in.

Re:Over the top

[speculatrix]

if each email received took say 30 seconds to delete *on*average*, multiply that by the millions he sent out. if human lifespan is 80 years, how many lifetimes did he waste? I suspect many lifetimes worth of time wasted.

Re:Over the top

[voice_of_all_reason]

next guy to do this will not only be shaking in his boots, but will most likely think twice (ie: is it worth it? probably not.)

Deterrance is a myth easily disproved by none other than the department of justice: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corrtyp.htm

Between 1980 and 2000 the number of people in state prison for violent crimes went from 200,000 to 600,000 -- a 150% increase. I can tell you with certainly the US population has not increased that much over the same period of time, so we can assume the prison rate per capita is increasing despite the idea of "making an example".

Re:Over the top

[Chris Burke]

Hell, you might as well try and take down the police who attempt to bring you in. If you manage to get a few, it'd sorta be like a bonus.

Well, the only thing that I can think of is that then you'd be in the class of cop-killers, one of the groups along with pedophiles, snitches, and cops themselves whose lives are extra-special not-fun in prison.

Re:Over the top

[loganrapp]

It's not just one crime; it's thousands.

Really. Every time a misleading or fraudulent e-mail was sent, that's one crime. Now, say you do a crime that's worth one year in jail. Do that a hundred and one times, that's a hundred and one years, seperately.

Don't think of it as one fraud being given a century; consider it as one fraud, one year. Once you're done with that one - hey, you gotta pay for this one, too, and so on, and so forth.

Murder and rape - you get bitch-motherfucking-slapped just for that act and that act alone. Fraud, you're going to get a little nick and cut for each time. Death by a thousand cuts, rather than the broadsword you'd get for worse offenses.

Re:Over the top

[Intron]

"200,000 to 600,000 -- a 150% increase"

hmmmm

Re:Over the top

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, his crimers are not akin to murder which warrants a life sentence in many states

And when a diabetic dies becuase he wasn't able to get his insulin as a result of this asshole cleaning out his account? Somebody has to walk a rough neighborhood because slappy mc'spammer here had a great idea on how to afford a big screen TV? When someone can't deal with being rejected from another job because his credit report is a mess and decides to end it?

Fraud can have serious real world impact, the fall out from identity theft and stolen money can be devestating to those living on the edge, the majority of Americans. Personally, I have more sympathy for the guy who lost his temper and did something stupid than for the guy who thought destroying people's lives was a great way to make some extra cash.

Durr

[voice_of_all_reason]

Spamming != Phishing? Why not just hit him for fraud instead, other than to show off their new baby?

Not really a CAN-SPAM victory

[MrKevvy]

... Unless the prosecution was for spam alone (ie spam advertising a legal product.) This was just out-and-out fraud. Most spamvertised "products" are illegal anyways (prescription drugs sold without a prescription, phishing, online gambling, etc.) so the CAN-SPAM act isn't needed to prosecute.

Re:Not really a CAN-SPAM victory

[jfengel]

It's a useful precedent: if the convictions under CAN-SPAM do hold up, then it will be easier to go after those whose crimes are purely spamming.

At least, it used to be the case that there were people whose sole crime was sending out absurd amounts of clearly unwanted email. ("Clearly unwanted" in the sense that they deliberately provided false information in headers and refused to honor opt-out requests. Providing false information in headers was not in and of itself fraudulent.)

These days, given how much spam goes through bot-nets, there may not be any spammers left who are not guilty of crimes other than sending spam. But it may also be the case that it's hard to convict them on, say, hacking charges, but you could get them on the spam charges.

And conversely, if the appeals court throws out the CAN-SPAM convictions, even if it keeps the other convictions, we'll know that we have to either rewrite the law or depend on the existing fraud laws.

What about foreign based spammers?

[alshithead]

This may be a great deterrent for US based spammers but I don't think the foreign based spammers will blink an eye from it.

I would hope that other governments could make similar examples of spammers based from their countries.

Re:Will it Make a Difference?

[Rob T Firefly]

We can start by having ISPs who know computers crunching out a 1000 emails at a time in the middle of the night get dumped off the Internet until the user gets a new hard drive or computer.

That would require a method of ISPs somehow verifying things about the computers or other devices you have hooked up. Lot of worms in that can...

Re:Don't Spam, Molest Kids Instead

[DragonWriter]

So this guy is up for 101 years for spamming, but some dirt bag that molested his daughter-in-law for 6 years only serves a 4 year sentence.

Yeah, that makes all sorts of sense.

You're comparing the sum of all the maximum sentences for a bunch of offenses, on the one hand, to the actual sentence imposed, on the other. The maximum sentence for sexually abusing a young child even once in most states is something like 10-20 years; so even assuming it occurred only twice a year for six years, the maximum sentence would be far higher than that cited in this case.

In practice, though, sentences for multiple counts are rarely (and, in the federal system, there are sentencing guidelines that assure this is almost never the case) anything like the sum of the maximum sentence available for each of the offenses for which the defendant was convicted.

So, the problem you are seeing is because your comparison is completely invalid.

Re:Don't Spam, Molest Kids Instead

[soft_guy]

So this guy is up for 101 years for spamming, but some dirt bag that molested his daughter-in-law for 6 years only serves a 4 year sentence.
 
Yeah, that makes all sorts of sense.
 
  How do you molest your daughter in law? Since your daughter in law is the woman married to your son, she is an adult, so it would just be what we call "having an affair" (although kind of a creepy one).

Re:Don't Spam, Molest Kids Instead

[LunaticTippy]

It seems to me that child molesters have it fairly rough. They spend years at the bottom of the social structure in prison, probably getting molested theirselves, then get to try their luck with a felony conviction on their record and mandatory lifetime on a notifier list. I wouldn't volunteer for that kind of treatment.

Not to mention parents who are charged with child abuse for spanking or people charged for computer images they may have not known about. I'm already afraid of the "think of the children" people.