2 NC residents convicted of spamming
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A Loudoun County jury convicted two North Carolina residents of violating Virginia&#39;s anti-spam law yesterday, a decision that likely will become a landmark in the nation&#39;s growing crusade against unwanted e-mail.
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By Wendy Leonard Deseret Morning News  A man who intentionally caused a widespread Internet blackout in the Vernal area earlier this yea was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison.
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Authorities in the US are considering a $250,000 bounty on spammers in an attempt to close them down. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has suggested rewards of anything from $100,000 to $250,000 for information.
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By The Roanoke Times, Va.  Jun. 3--Any individual who engages in and profits from the practice of invading and clogging computers with junk e-mail ought to be prosecuted as severely as the concocter of any criminal conspiracy.
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(InfoWorld) - Adam Vitale pled guilty Monday to sending unsolicited e-mail to 1.2 million AOL LLC subscribers, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Michael J. Garcia said. Vitale and co-defendant Todd Moeller, were in contact with a government confidential informant via instant messaging, and agreed to send spam advertisements for a product in exchange for half of the profits, Garcia said in a statement. The pair then sent about 1.2 million unsolicited e-mails to AOL users between August 17 and August 23, 2005. They changed the headers on the e-mails and used various computers to conceal the source of the spam. Vitale, 26, resides in Brooklyn. Sentencing is scheduled for September 13 before U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who presided over the criminal case, in Manhattan. He faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison and a fine of US$250,000 or double the maximum gain or loss resulting from the offense. Moeller, a New Jersey resident, will stand trial for the same charges. One observer felt the legal victory was somewhat hollow. "I think this is a moral victory for AOL, but not much else," said Adam O'Donnell, director of emerging technologies at Cloudmark Inc. "The economic motivations underlying abuse mean some other spammer has already taken his place, and it is likely the spammer's replacement is coming from outside American jurisdiction." Â
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Two plead guilty to offenses under the Can-Spam Act after ISP finds they had sent out thousands of junk messages.
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Although the jury for the nation&#39;s first felony spam trial recommended Wednesday that defendants Jeremy Jaynes serve a nine year prison term and his sister, Jessica Degroot, pay $7,500, defense attorneys say the fight is far from over.
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John Bombard faces up to two years in prison for distributed denial-of-service attack.
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p2pnet.net News:- Spammer Jeremy Jaynes, aka Gaven Stubberfield, had the distinction of being the first spammer to be charged under Virginia&#39;s antispam law.
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A MAN convicted of violating anti-spam laws by sending out tens of thousands of unsolicited emails using fake addresses faces nine years in prison in Virginia, US authorities say.
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A North Carolina man and his sister became the first two people convicted of a felony for sending fraudulent unsolicited commercial e-mail.
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A brother and sister who sent junk e-mail to millions of America Online customers were convicted yesterday in the nation&#39;s first felony prosecution of Internet spam distributors.
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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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Three people have pleaded guilty to charges related to spam e-mail that promised U.S. victims millions of dollars from an estate and a lottery, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.In one scenario, the defendants sent e-mails purporting to be from an individual suffering from terminal throat cancer who needed assistance distributing approximately $55 million to charity, the DOJ said.The three defendants, two from Nigeria and one from Senegal, sent spam e-mail to thousands of potential victims, in which they falsely claimed to control millions of dollars located abroad, the DOJ said in a press release. The fraud victims lost $1.2 million by giving the defendants advance fees, the DOJ said.Pleading guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York were Nnamdi Chizuba Anisiobi, whose aliases include Yellowman, Abdul Rahman, Michael Anderson, Edmund Walter, Nancy White, Jiggaman, and Namo, age 31, of Nigeria; Anthony Friday Ehis, also known as John J. Smith, Toni N. Amokwu, and Mr. T, age 34, of Senegal; and Kesandu Egwuonwu, also known as KeKe, Joey Martin Maxwell, David Mark, and Helmut Schkinger, age 35, of Nigeria.Anisiobi pled guilty to one count of conspiracy, eight counts of wire fraud, and one count of mail fraud. Ehis pled guilty to one count of conspiracy and five counts of wire fraud. Egwuonwu pled guilty to one count of conspiracy, three counts of wire fraud, and one count of mail fraud.The maximum penalty for mail and wire fraud is 20 years in prison. The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.A fourth defendant, Lenn Nwokeafor, fled to Nigeria and was subsequently arrested by the Nigerian Economic &amp; Financial Crimes Commission on July 27, 2006. He is being held by the Nigerian authorities pending extradition to the United States, the DOJ said.In the throat cancer scheme, the defendants offered to give a 20 percent commission to the victim, or a charity of his or her choice, in exchange for the victim&#39;s help. The defendants would send a variety of fraudulent documents, including a &quot;letter of authority&quot; or a &quot;certificate of deposit,&quot; making it appear that the promised funds were available, as well as pictures of an individual claiming to suffer from throat cancer, the DOJ said.Defendant Anisiobi allegedly telephoned victims, disguising his voice to give the impression that he was suffering from throat cancer.After obtaining their victims&#8217; trust, the defendants asked them to wire-transfer payment for a variety of advance fees for legal representation, taxes, and additional documentation. The victims then received nothing back, the DOJ said.In some cases, if the victims said they could not afford to pay the advance fees, the defendants would send them counterfeit checks, supposedly from a cancer patient, to cover those fees. Many victims deposited the checks and then drew on them to wire-transfer the advance fees. When the checks did not clear, the victims suffered substantial losses, the DOJ said.&quot;Online scam artists should be on notice that we will continue to work closely with our international partners to ensure that there are no safe geographic boundaries for committing these crimes,&quot; Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher of the DOJ&#39;s Criminal Division said in a statement.The investigation was initiated by Dutch law enforcement authorities, who notified the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which opened its own investigation. The three who pled guilty were arrested in Amsterdam on Feb, 21, 2006.
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A spammer accused of sending unsolicited mail to 1.2 million AOL subscribers pleaded guilty and faces potentially substantial fines and jail time, but one observer said the victory was at best a moral one for AOL.
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Try not to smile: A top spammer may be sentenced to hard time.
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Two men are convicted of swapping films and music over the net and face up to five years in prison.