FTC Sues Las Vegas Porn Operation for Spam
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A Las Vegas pornography operation  that sent out hundreds of thousands of sexually explicit "spam"  e-mail messages has been temporarily shut down in the first  case of federal spam laws being used against sex marketers,  U.S. regulators said on Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - Two men were convicted in Arizona Monday on eight criminal counts, including money laundering and transportation of obscene materials, in connection with running a pornographic spamming business, the U.S. Department of Justice said. A jury in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona in Phoenix convicted Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, Calif., and James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Ariz., on all eight counts they faced. The trial, which began June 5, was the first to include charges under the Controlling the Assault of Non-solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 2003 in an effort to crack down on unsolicited commercial e-mail. The men made "millions of dollars by sending unwanted sexually explicit e-mails to hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including families and children," Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Criminal Division, said in a statement. Kilbride and Schaffer started their spamming operation in 2003, and they made more than $2 million by sending out spam e-mail advertising porn Web sites, the DOJ said. The two earned a commission for each person directed to one of the sites. "Hard-core" pornographic images were embedded in each e-mail and were visible to any person who opened the e-mail, the DOJ said. Kilbride and Schaffer were convicted of two violations of the CAN-SPAM Act. One of the counts charged that Kilbride and Schaffer sent multiple electronic commercial mail messages containing falsified header information. In the other count, the two were charged with sending e-mail using domain names that were registered using false information. Kilbride and Schaffer were also convicted on one count of conspiring to commit fraud in connection with electronic mail and four counts of felony obscenity charges for transporting hard-core pornographic images of adults. They were also convicted on a federal money laundering charge for moving funds inside and out of the United States to conceal the ownership of those funds. The two face a maximum penalty of five years in prison for each CAN-SPAM and obscenity offense, as well as a fine of up to $500,000 and a maximum of 20 years in prison for money laundering. Sentencing is set for Sept. 24. When the CAN-SPAM Act went into effect in January 2004, Kilbride and Schaffer arranged to remotely log on to servers in Amsterdam, to make it look like their spam messages were being sent from abroad, when in reality Kilbride and Schaffer were operating their business from inside the United States, the DOJ said. Eight U.S. residents who complained to either the U.S. Federal Trade Commission or AOL traveled from Massachusetts, Texas, Iowa, and California to testify in the trial and to describe how their families, including some children, received the spam. AOL and the FTC received more than 660,000 complaints about the defendants' pornographic spam, including some from people who had set parental controls to protect their children from accessing graphic sexual content.
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Spam that includes sexually oriented content viewable in the e-mail message violates the &quot;brown paper wrapper&quot; rules that are part of the CAN-SPAM law, as well as Federal Trade Commission rules.
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America Online Inc. said Thursday it had filed a federal lawsuit accusing numerous unnamed defendants of violating federal and state laws by sending bulk messages known as "spim" to instant message accounts and Internet chat rooms.
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Unwanted e-mail from affiliates of an adult-entertainment company have garnered a $465,000 penalty in a settlement with the FTC, the latest in the agency's successful crackdown on sexually explicit junk e-mail.
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Porn marketer agrees to pays $465,000 in penalties, says FTC.
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Microsoft said on Thursday that the company filed seven lawsuits against spammers that have sent sexually explicit emails on the Internet without adhering to federal laws.
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Over the past few years, computer crimes and annoyances have become an increasingly important part of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's work. In the past year, the FTC has announced settlements with spammers, adware distributors, and even Sony BMG Music Entertainment, over its distribution of rootkit software.
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AMERICA Online has filed a lawsuit accusing numerous unnamed defendants of violating US federal and state laws by sending bulk messages known as &quot;spim&quot; to instant message accounts and internet chat rooms.
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Gum shoes case porno peddler that sent smut through the US Mail At a time when phishing, malware and other cyber crime is hitting unprecedented levels, a federal grand jury has indicted two Ohio men who ran a website that used the US mail to distribute DVDs prosecutors claim are obscene.â¦
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Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones is suing a strip club in Nevada for using her image to promote the club, without her consent. The star has filed a suit against The Spice House after discovering that she featured
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Texas sued one of the world's largest "spam" e-mail operations on Thursday, seeking millions of dollars from two men it says are responsible for sending illegal messages on the Internet, the state's attorney general said.
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Spam that contains sexually oriented material viewable in e-mail messages violates the &quot;brown paper wrapper&quot; provision in the Can-Spam law.
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The Texas attorney general has launched a lawsuit against two men it says are spammers.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;has settled a complaint with a Web-based company it accused of selling people&#39;s telephone records without permission, the agency said Monday.
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Microsoft files suit against a company and individuals accused of sending debt relief and porn spam to Hotmail accounts.
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Sanctions against botnet operators The Federal Trade Commission, the US consumer rights watchdog, has succeeded in shutting down four illegal spamming operations judged to have breached federal anti-spam laws. Targets of the lawsuits included an operation that offered the supposed chance to "date lonely wives" and two outfits that allegedly bombarded unwilling recipients with lurid ads for pornographic web sites, sent via compromised PCs.â¦