Appeals Court Judges Sick Of Spam Too; Uphold Spammer Conviction

from the welcome-to-jail dept

Last year, we were surprised that Jeremy Jaynes, admittedly one of the world’s biggest spammers, received a nine-year prison sentence. While some form of punishment seemed reasonable (perhaps more for false advertising, than spam), nine years seemed excessive and silly. We’d much prefer forcing Jaynes to sit around deleting spam for a few years instead. Today, however, an appeals court upheld his conviction meaning he may finally begin the long, long sentence. The court specifically ruled that putting spammers in jail is “clearly not excessive.” Perhaps it would be in the best interest of spammers to figure out how not to spam judges in the future.


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Comments on “Appeals Court Judges Sick Of Spam Too; Uphold Spammer Conviction”

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28 Comments
lisa says:

punishment

Don’t feel too sorry for him. Read the whole story – Spamhaus considers him one of the worst (out of 10) in the world. Also, he committed fraud through his spam, netting him millions. What’s worse is that the addresses he used were not legimately obtained through marketing lists or customer registrations – he stole his email database from AOL. Virginia, where he was convicted, is the home to AOL. No coincidence.

PaulM says:

spamming wastes people's lives

although one single spam is negligible, it really does steal time from people’s lives, and as such should be punished.

9 years? lets see, that’s 3285 days, or 78840 hours or 4.7 million minutes.

if he sent out, say, 4.7 million spams, and each one took one minute to delete by the recipient, then it’s a fair sentence.

chance are he sent out many more spams than that, the sentence was not enough!

Ian says:

Not theft but spam

He wasn’t convicted for theft but a law against sending more than a specific amount of spam messages in a day and using a fake e-mail address.

from. http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=155
Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, North Carolina, a prolific spammer who operated using the alias ‘Gaven Stubberfield’ and was listed by Spamhaus’ ROKSO database as being the 8th most prolific spammer in the world, has been convicted of spamming using deceptive routing information to hide the source. A Virginia court recommended Jaynes spend nine years in prison for sending hundreds of thousands of unwanted e-mail messages. Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said Jaynes was found guilty under a Virginia state law that prohibits e-mails marketers from sending more than a certain amount of spams within a given time frame and prohibits the use of fake e-mail addresses.

Jaynes’ sister, Jessica DeGroot, was also found guilty and fined $7,500. An associate, Richard Rutkowski of eVictory Consulting (known to Spamhaus as being involved in “National Wealth Builders” spamming), was found not guilty.

A Loudoun County jury decided that Jeremy Jaynes, 30, and his sister Jessica DeGroot, 28 flooded tens of thousands of AOL email accounts with unsolicited email. The jury recommended that Jaynes spend nine years in prison and that DeGroot pay $7,500 in fines for violating Virginia’s anti-spam law.

Although both Jaynes and DeGroot lived in North Carolina, Virginia asserted jurisdiction because they sent messages through server computers located in the state.

Roger says:

Murder sentence

I just read about a man here in Colorado who was convicted of first degree murder and received an 8-12 year sentence.
Now I hate spam as much as anyone, in fact possibly more, but getting equivalent time to a murderer?
What message are we sending here? Is our valuable 2 minutes (if that) per day that we spend deleting the few messages that make it through the spam filter each day, worth the same as a human life? Is spam is seriously being treated as severely as one of the biblical sins? Thou shalt not send unsolicited emails?
Those judges should go spend some time in prison and see what the time that they so liberally hand out is really like.

doubledoh says:

spam = free speech

I hate spam as much as the next guy, but it’s still free speech. You can’t make everything you don’t like illegal unless you’re willing to see some things you DO like become illegal too. Relying on the government to regulate and control things you don’t like is a vicious and never ending cycle. Stop it!

I use gmail and I barely ever get any spam in my inbox The free market (Google) fixed my spam problem with ZERO govt help. Private enterprise and innovation fixed spam because there was a profit to be made doing it (gasp). If we left the spam problem for the government to “fix” I can gaurantee you that my penis would be 3 inchers longer right now, or at least it could be for the low low price of only 39.99!

Roger says:

Worse than terrorism?

The following information regarding the jail sentences of terrorists comes from TRAC, a data research organization connected to Syracuse University, who has been studying a wide range of federal agencies and programs for more than 15 years.

“The typical sentences recently imposed on individuals considered to be international terrorists are not impressive. For all those convicted as a result of cases initiated in the two years after 9//11, for example, the median sentence — half got more and half got less– was 28 days. For those referrals that came in more recently — through May 31, 2006 — the median sentence was 20 days. For cases started in the two year period before the 9/11 attack, the typical sentence was much longer, 41 months.”

Ok now seriously, 3 1/2 years for terrorism and 9 years for sending unsolicited emails? Something is wrong here.

Mark says:

lenient sentence for spammer

Spam is not “free speech.” The prohibition against spam is not geared towards the content of the message. It is geared toward the invasive and abusive manner in which the message is conveyed. Spam results in the expenditure of time (necessary to differentiate from legitimate messages and spam and necessary to delete the spam) and forces changes in email addresses. Of course, problems are then caused by persons sending legitimate messages to obsolete addresses. This spammer send billions and billions of spam messages. He acquired a net worth of about twenty million dollars. How about forcing the little dirtbag to serve a minute for each spam message? Nine years is neither excessive nor silly. It’s lenient. These little shits ought to be drawn and quartered. Their estates should be forfeited. They should be relentlessly hunted.

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