"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."

Comments

Re:believe it when I see it

[Anonymous Coward]

Money SOMETIMES makes things go around. Usually it just gets you a slight tactical advantage at trial (actually, LACK of money puts you at a tactical disadvantage... that's the real difference) but tactical advantages weay close cases,,, they don't help when the giernment has a solid case.

In a country of 300 million people, and a LOT of courts and judges, there are some bad apples... but relatively few given the size of the barrel. This guy will be sentenced by a federal judge, and there is zero (statistically) chance he would get off with 1 year as you predict. Absent a plea bargain (which seems unlikely since he was the actual target of the investigation) I predict 4 to 7 years.

Awesome, but will do little to curb spam

[llZENll]

Spam is just insane, 90 billion per day are sent, 90 billion! This is great as it sends a message to spammers that finally it will not be tollerated. The charges and sentences are pretty pathetic considering the amount of spam these guys sent, probably well into the trillions. Unfortunately this will do little to curb spam as we have little power enforcing spamming across the borders of the USA.

but does the punishment fit the crime?

[hobo sapiens]

In all seriousness, though...11 years?

Of course he won't serve that. And of course, spam is bad. But 11 years?

Who was harmed in the process of his sending spam? How many people did he physically hurt? Even, how much money did he take from people? Ok, so the spam consumed bandwidth and wasted people's time. And he gets 11 years for that? Seems a little inappropriate given the crime, don't you think?

I could a large fine, community service, and a year in prison. But, sheesh! A manslaughter charge won't get you 11 years. Are we that out of whack that you get more time for spam than for killing someone?

Re:but does the punishment fit the crime?

[TheRaven64]

I'm not in favour of prisons in general (with the exception of a few sociopaths who can't be rehabilitated and would be a danger to the public if released), but it doesn't seem like too much time. 11 years, is 4015 days, or 5,781,600 minutes. He spammed 1,277,000 people. That works out at 4.5 minutes per person.

I would be willing to bet he sent at least ten spams to each person, which works out at 27 minutes in prison per spam. If it takes 2-3 seconds to check if an email is spam, then the prison sentence is only ten times as much as the total amount of time he's wasted, ignoring the cost of bandwidth etc. that has been used to deliver the spam. If you start from the belief that prisons are a good method of punishing criminals then this doesn't sound like a particularly unreasonable amount of time, particularly considering that it's a maximum, and he is unlikely to get more than half of it.

Re:but does the punishment fit the crime?

[hobo sapiens]

"It is not the victimless crime that supporters of spam like to make out."
I hope you aren't putting words in my mouth.

As for the rest of your post, you've gotta be kidding. As I said, spam is bad and nasty. I never said he didn't hurt anyone. I said he didn't physically hurt anyone. Financial restitution is in order.

Maybe some jail time is in order. I mean, the punishment seems a little excessive. But as another poster replied to me, they are making an example out of him. That's the only thing I can come up with as to why he gets so much time. I am not defending him.

I don't know anything about the guy, but what if he was just some geek who thought of a way to make some money? Maybe he didn't even realize what the impact would be. I dunno, that much jail time just seems crazy. This is precedent-setting. What other online activity could be made illegal next? How much jail time could you do? This is just as ridiculous as an SA who once worked for a p2p service getting jail time. What, we are giving out hefty prison sentences for relatively innocuous (read, online) crimes that don't result in loss of life?

Re:but does the punishment fit the crime?

[Battle_Ratt]

What is missing from this thread is the other half of the quote.
"The indictment said that in less than a week..."
So how much spam did he send in a year? Billions very likely.
Now this set of charges is only about the activity during that specific week, however take into account just how many years of others peoples lives he has taken, 30 seconds at a time.

11 years doesn't even come close even Steven payback.

Truly Perplexing

[gaelfx]

He was caught making a deal with a government informant that sent spam e-mails advertising a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the product's profits, prosecutors said. Was the guy so greedy he couldn't see that this deal was way too sweet or is this the standard pay-off to a spammer? Or is that not actually a great deal?

Re:believe it when I see it

[hobo sapiens]

Then maybe the right punishment is that he has to pay back the money he "earned" or go broke, and of course he'll go broke. Prisons are full enough, and there are much worse people to send there. Make him go broke and then do some community service. Seems like sending him to jail is a bit draconian.

Plus, I can think of a few things he could do for community service:
1) since people once referred to the net as the info superhighway, make him the highway dept's official roadkill scraper for a few years
2) make him clean out some tubes...that's right, get them sewers real clean, boy!
3) let him go work at a nursing home where they give the old men free v!agr4 -- while dressed up as the girl from St Pauli Girl beer bottles. Ouch!
4) he has to clean all the restrooms in NYC's entire subway system.

Cruel? Unusual? Yes! Fitting? Yes!

Re:Jail Not Warranted

[Technician]

Why would we jail someone for spamming? They are non-violent offenders.

Would you like to spend your entire life from birth to death deleting spam? It doesn't take long to delete a single spam, just a second or two. In the US alone, just deleting spam has taken the manhours of several peoples entire lifetimes. Just because it isn't all stacked up for a few individuals to use their entire life deleting spam but spreading it out cross the entire US population instead does not remove the fact that spam has taken several entire lifetimes of manhours to deal with the problem.

SPAM has pretty much killed my first e-mail account. Instead of checking it daily and deleting the spam, I now check it monthly for content and flush the entire thing. It's the only way to not spend lots of time sorting and just hitting delete daily. SPAM has changed e-mail from a useful tool, to someting I'm about to drop entirely. Those who need to reach me has my pager number.