Spammer Faces Decades In Prison For Sending More Than 1 Million Spam Emails (suntimes.com)

mi quotes a report from Chicago Sun-Times: A man has been indicted on federal fraud charges for allegedly sending more than a million spam emails. The indictment charges 36-year-old Michael Persaud of Scottsdale, Arizona, with 10 counts of wire fraud and seeks the forfeiture of four computers, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office. The indictment was returned Dec. 9, 2016, and was unsealed after Persaud was arrested last month in Arizona. Between 2012 and 2015, Persaud used multiple IP addresses and domains to send spam emails over at least nine networks, including several servers in Chicago, according to the indictment. He sent more than a million spam emails to people in the U.S. and abroad, using false names to register domains and creating fraudulent "from address" fields to conceal the fact that he was the one sending the emails. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
mi leaves us with some rather unpleasant imagery, writing: "Personally, I wish [the sentence] carried removal of 1 square millimeter of skin for each message instead."

Comments

Re:Good!

[KiloByte]

You don't think the punishment may be a bit... draconian?!!!

The numbers are the max allowed for that indictment, sentences that spammers get are a ridiculously low fraction of that.

I do think spamming should be punished harsher than murder, as the cost for the society is greater. Somehow people underestimate the harm if it is spread among many people. Like: you build a coal power plant that reduces the lives of 100k people by a year each -- you've committed the equivalent of more than 1000 murders, yet don't even get a fine for that.

On the other hand, I find the count of "more than 1 million spam emails" to be suspicious. A decade ago, spam response rate was 1 in 12.5M, and I'd expect it to be way lower today. A spammer doesn't spam "for the evulz", he spams because it is profitable. A billion mails per campaign is a low figure, and a spammer doesn't build the infrastructure for just a single run.