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"Spam King" Pleads Guilty in U.S. Federal Court
Monty writes "It looks like 'Spam King' Adam Vitale has finally plead guilty to violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 in federal court in New York City. 'The indictment said that in less than a week in August 2005, Vitale and Moeller sent e-mails on behalf of the informant to more than 1,277,000 addresses of subscribers at AOL, the online division of Time Warner Inc. Vitale will be sentenced on September 13 when he faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison. Moeller, who lives in New Jersey, faces the same charge.' We discussed Vitale's arrest back in February."
(d) Presentence Report.
- (1) Applying the Sentencing Guidelines. The presentence report must:
- (A) identify all applicable guidelines and policy statements of the Sentencing Commission;
- (B) calculate the defendant's offense level and criminal history category;
- (C) state the resulting sentencing range and kinds of sentences available;
- (D) identify any factor relevant to:
- (i) the appropriate kind of sentence, or
- (ii) the appropriate sentence within the applicable sentencing range; and
- (E) identify any basis for departing from the applicable sentencing range.
(2) Additional Information. The presentence report must also contain the following information:
- (A) the defendant's history and characteristics, including:
- (i) any prior criminal record;
- (ii) the defendant's financial condition; and
- (iii) any circumstances affecting the defendant's behavior that may be helpful in imposing sentence or in correctional treatment;
- (B) verified information, stated in a nonargumentative style, that assesses the financial, social, psychological, and medical impact on any individual against whom the offense has been committed;
- (C) when appropriate, the nature and extent of nonprison programs and resources available to the defendant;
- (D) when the law provides for restitution, information sufficient for a restitution order;
- (E) if the court orders a study under 18 U.S.C. 3552 (b), any resulting report and recommendation; and
- (F) any other information that the court requires.
CornellInfiltrated dot Net
He should be sent to Russia, there he would find justice like Vardan Kushnir
That was not funny.
Simple: spammers do what they do because they know they'll get off light or that the risks are virtually nil. Prison makes most people (including spammers) think twice about doing what they do.
I agree that as non-violent offenders spammers "probably" should not go to prison. However, segregating them from society in some way is the only way to keep them from applying their same techniques to something else. For example, if you kept them house-bound via anklets and forbade them to use computers or access the Internet directly or indirectly, they'd sit around doing nothing for a while, then would resort to their same tactics except via snail mail, telephone spam, or anything else which they could apply their methodologies to (thus not violating their sentence).
The more fear you instill in spammers, the higher the chance they'll stop. I refuse to believe they "can't" stop -- it's a choice they make. They can become working-class citizens like the rest of us, and earn their keep legitimately and be part of a productive society, or they can continue to bottom-feed and abuse a system that was never intended for wankers in the first place.
Make sense?
Or perhaps the collective time of the people involved to filter out the incoming junk. I see at least 1000 per month caught by my filter. A filter that _used_ to be entirely unnecessary.
Having an active email account on the internet, almost guarantees getting spammed. OK, so I can tidy it, delete it or otherwise remove it. Much like I can pick up the empty beer cans that someone has decided to drop in my garden. This doesn't mean I appreciate it in the slightest.
This spamking has made a very larger sum of money indeed, by some seriously antisocial behaviour.
1,277,000 addresses
1 second per email
@ 60 emails per minute
= 21283 minutes
=354 hours of pressing delete=
Or 8.87 40-hour work weeks
I guess a few factors must be considered:
a) As spam (and the act of spamming) cost almost nothing, so if it is so "ok", then it could get much worse if unchecked. So, as we can not add much cost to bandwidth, the problem is that it might land you in jail. That's the spammer "cost" or "risk". Basically, why would be a requirement for me or my employer that I must give attention to every potential seller on this planet that thinks he has something something I need (a nigerian scam, \/14gr4, whatever) on a no-question-asked basis?
b) A relative of mine died a few months ago. I'm having trouble communicating with my lawyer because of the spam software he/she is using to get rid of spam. Sometimes, key information was delayed because it was wrongly classified as spam, or maybe lost. So, it costs me in both time and resources and money. On top of that the law here stipulates a certain period of time in which all this issues have to be dealt with. My sisters live in other continent, so it's tricky for them to call our local lawyer given the time difference, and phone call costs.
c) In my work we have bought or have to look after the following things because of spam: servers, sw licenses, high availability clusters, e-mail administrator, software, updates, patches, IDS's, security reports, security monitoring, utilities bill because of servers and HVAC. So, spam "costs" us a lot.
Bottom line, I'm more than just "inconvenienced" because of spam. And if you think I shouldn't: Would you be so kind to allow me to bill you our spam-related problems? I'm having a much harder time down here because of the nice little trick of a few people getting richer because of sending millons of low cost email on "products" I don't need, or I did not ask for.
Hah! He'll be in the cell next to Paris Hilton because it's currently seen as a "victimless" crime. What they don't realize is the wide reaching impact that this has. Most people in the country work for small to medium sized businesses. These are the employers that are hardest hit by this. Email infrastructures are melting down under the load. This means that companies are spending dollars on deploying spam filtering software, hardware, more bandwidth, etc. to deal with the problems. This is money that could be better used to hire employees, pursue R&D, improve their facility, etc. In the long run it siphons resources away from the rest of the operating budget. It's like a leech or a tapeworm.
2 cents,
QueenB.
HDGary secures my bank
That was not informative.
"But this one goes to 11!"
You're assuming he only sent 1 mail to each address. If this guy is anything like the people asking me to deposit a currency my country doesn't use with 'VIP Royal Casinos', the people using text from bugzilla for their mail titles, or the countless women with middle initials who behind 'can you imagine that you are healthy' he'll have spammed each one of them dozens of times per day.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
There is no parole in the Federal prison system since ~1990.
Q.