30 Years For Online Pharmacy Spammer

jotter507 writes "So, you get arrested for running an illegal online pharmacy and the judge orders you to stop selling medication over the Internet. Don't sit around and do nothing before the trial! Run off to the Dominican Republic on a false passport, withdraw money from an account ordered frozen, and start up another online 'pharmacy.' It didn't end well for 27-year old Christopher William Smith, also known as 'Rizler.' The world-reviled spammer and Internet drug dispenser received a 30-year sentence from a federal judge on Wednesday."

Comments

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[ShaunC]

If this guy's getting 30 years, then whoever's behind the "United States National Medical Association" deserves the death penalty. I've never seen so much spam for one target site as I have for US-NMA, and what puzzles me is that the spam continues even though the domain has been parked at an error page for at least a week now. It's almost as if they no longer care about selling fake pills, they just want to annoy the hell out of everyone...

Oh well, kudos to those involved for putting another spammer away. Keep up the good work.

It couldn't happen to a better guy

[paladinwannabe2]

It seems the spammer did everything in his power to maximize his jail sentence. Not only did he defy the judge at every opportunity, but he also threatened to kill a witness's children if she testified. He probably could have gotten away with serious fines if he had only cooperated, but instead he's probably going to lose not just his 10+ Automobiles, but also as many of his millions of dollars as the government can find.

It is an excessive sentence

[mi]

He fled the country, was laundering money, and (most egregiously) was trying to hire a hitman to kill one of the children of a witness against him.

Still excessive in my opinion. American sentences boggle one's mind... After Stalin's death the maximum sentence in USSR was reduced from 25 years to 15 — although many crimes were still punishable by death (as they are here) and one also got to spend their days in much harsher conditions than in the US.

The main difference here is that in the US sentences are added up upon one another, whereas in most of the rest of the world they run concurrently. It could be argued, that American system continues to deter criminals after their first crime, while the other system makes the subsequent crimes "free". On the other hand, once a crook has accumulated enough years in US, their subsequent crimes are also free, because any sentence will be, in effect, a life one. With a considerable sentencing leeway given to judges, in neither system do the subsequent crimes need to be "free".

Increasing the harshness of the punishment hardens the criminals and makes them more likely to escalate violence. There is a well known historical precedent from medieval Europe, where a local baron instituted death penalty for highway robbers. Having nothing more to risk, the robbers started killing their victims instead of simply robbing them...

What works best is the inevitability of punishment, rather then the harshness of it. 25% of the spammers receiving a 1 year sentence would deter more scumbags, than 2 of them (a fraction of a percent) getting publicly chopped up on a wheel.