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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.'"
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.
liqbase
Spamming != Phishing? Why not just hit him for fraud instead, other than to show off their new baby?
... 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.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
Fix your link! I keep clicking on "CL1cK HERE TO 3NLARGE MALE M3MBER" and nothing happens!!!
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
I hope so but...
Given the creeps anywhere can run these scams outside of N. America, it just means other methods might work better.
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.
This is because our legal system is based on "counts" of the offense. He sent millions of spam emails. Most murderers don't kill millions of people. He wouldn't have gotten 101 years if he had sent one spam email or even 100.
I'm not saying it's fair or anything, just that's the way it is. Perhaps there should be a mandatory maximum sentence--though that raises a whole other set of problems.
-=Lothsahn=-
I'm surprised they didn't get him for tax evasion, too. I mean, the IRS even requires that you pay taxes on stolen property.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
You couldn't possibly be biased, though, Mr. "Isagenix."
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.
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).
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
You know, the CAN-SPAM Act is often criticized on Slashdot and elsewhere as being toothless and full of loopholes. People think it's a worthless law, because spammers can easily get around it. I disagree. Let me explain.
First of all, what we really want to avoid is any law that inhibits our right to freedom of speech. It's very easy to write a definition of spam that is overly broad, and applies to legitimate messages as well. Let's assume for the moment that this would be a bad thing. I haven't heard any complaints that CAN-SPAM is flawed in this way.
The complaints are that CAN-SPAM doesn't go far enough. Spammers could simply change their spam to comply with the provisions of the law, and suddenly their unwanted junk is no longer technically "spam" in the eyes of the law. In theory, this may be true, but in practice, it's not happening. The law has been in effect for three years now, and spammers still aren't even bothering to pretend to comply with the law, they're just continuing to blatantly disregard it. This means that just about all the spam I get in my inbox (plus all the spam that I would have gotten in my inbox if I didn't have a whole pile of filters in place to block it) is clearly defined as illegal according to CAN-SPAM.
So why am I still getting all this spam? It's not because CAN-SPAM is a bad law. It's not because the spammers have found a loophole, or have changed their spam so it complies with the law. The problem is enforcement: the FTC and FBI don't have the resources to go after these guys. It's been three years, and they've only gotten one conviction.
Yes, some spammers are based outside the US, and while CAN-SPAM may still apply to them because they're sending spam to Americans, they're outside the jurisdiction of our law enforcement agencies. Several other countries have pledged their support in the International War On Spam(TM), but again, somebody has to actually track down the spammers so they can be arrested, and that's what's not happening.
So what's the solution? It's not to pass more laws making spam more illegal than it already is. The solution is for Congress to earmark funding for spam investigation and prosecution. They won't think of it themselves, so somebody has to tell them to do it. So, write to your Senators and Representatives, and tell them you want to see better enforcement!
Now, who's got that list of checkboxes?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
"I have not read the RTFA, of course"
:-p
Or figured out what the 'RT' stands for
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
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.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Actually the federal prison is the nice one(in most states), in general fedearal penitentiary's(minimum or otherwise) are substantially less unpleasant than their state run equivilants. Part of this has to do with states trying to save cash on prisons, but it's also got to do with the kind of things that put you there. Murderers and rapists, in fact nearly all violent criminals are prosecuted by the state and incarcerated by the state. Federal offenses tend to be things like embezzlement, and other white collar crime(there are exceptions of course, violent crimes commited in certain places or to certain people are federal jurisdiction). That's not to say I'd want to spend time there, and unless youre rich and/or famous and can get a slap on the wrist sentence, it's not going to be a good time, but given the choice between state and federal, most folks would choose federal.
Eighth Amendment: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
101 years? Is this a joke? How is this not cruel and unusual? Some might argue it less cruel to shoot him.
This is disgusting.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
But think about the number of people this spammer succeeded in ripping off - was it 100, or 1000, or 10000? Usually you'd spent less time in jail for stealing $1M from one person than $100 each from 10,000 people, or $1000 each from 1000 people, but at six months in jail per petty theft or 1 year per grand theft, he could easily be doing a lot of time.
Remember that this guy's a phishing thief, not just a pills-or-porn seller. How much time does he deserve for theft? If an average worker makes $50K/year, and the spammer makes $500K ripping off N victims, that's 100 person-years of honest labor he'd need to do just to pay them back for the value of their lost work time, not even counting the lost value by not having their money when they needed it. Should he only have to give back 1x what he stole, or pay more than that as compensation?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks