Associated Press – September 5, 2006:

The Virginia Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld the nation’s first felony conviction of illegal spamming.

Jeremy Jaynes, of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the top 10 spammers in the world at the time of his arrest, used the Internet to peddle pornography and sham products and services, prosecutors said. Thousands of people fell for his scam, grossing Jaynes’ operations up to $750,000 per month, investigators said.

Jaynes was convicted in November 2005 for using false Internet addresses and aliases to send mass e-mail ads through an AOL server in Loudoun County, where Time Warner Inc. subsidiary AOL is based. Under Virginia law, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail is not a crime unless the sender masks his identity.

During the case prosecutors presented evidence of just 53,000 illegal e-mails, although authorities believe Jaynes was responsible for spewing out 10 million e-mails a day.



  1. gquaglia says:

    Unfortunately there are plenty more to take his place. As long as there are stupid people in the world, there will always be spammers to exploit them.

  2. PJ says:

    I hate spammers as much as the next guy, but I think 9 years is too much time.

  3. Gregory says:

    The point isn’t that he was a spammer, its that he was a con artist that USED spam. The conviction is more for the con and fraud than the spamming.

    Spam can be used to sell legitimate products, and that will always be a problem.

  4. Jägermeister says:

    #2

    Perhaps it’s too long… How about shortening it to one year under the condition that he’s forced to listen to spam radio 17 hours a day.

    http://spamradio.com/

  5. Mark T. says:

    The way I see it, that is nine years he can’t send any more spam.

    I don’t believe in karma but at ten million spams per day, nine years sounds kind of light. I don’t know how many years he sent that volume of daily spam but, for arguments sake, let’s say one year. That’s 3,652,500,000 spam emails. Nine years in prison equates to 284,018,400 seconds. That means he will spend one second in jail for every 12.86 spam emails he sent out over the course of one year.

    At that rate, if you or I get prosecuted for sending 100 spam emails, we would get less than eight seconds in jail. Sounds fair to me.

    But, as stated above, he is not in jail for spamming. He was using spam to scam people to the tune of $750,000 a month. And he was only #8 position on Spamhaus’ Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO)!

    http://tinyurl.com/dp2ka

    Jail is too good for scum like this.

  6. Billabong says:

    Have a good time in jail I hope your someones bitch real soon.

  7. Ballenger says:

    I think this guy’s parole should be based on the crime. Give him a (286) PC and an AOL mail account with an in-box containing the same number of pieces of spam he sent out. As soon as he puts a check in the little box and individually deletes those 3.6 billion spam e-mails, he walks. Oh, and one more thing, no spam blocking on his PC.

  8. ECA says:

    I would like, for the NEXT 9 years…
    That he clean up Original installations of win 2000 and XP, over high speed access. You ALL know which one…the one with IE 4 on it, and NO updates.
    And the first startup page must be a SPAM site.(MSn works for me)

    NO software protection until he can load it OFF the net…
    AND he has to update AT LEAST 2 machines a day…
    If they run out of machines, just REDo the install BACK to original on the SAME machine…and DO IT AGAIN….
    Pass this on to the Judge, PLEASE….Please please please…..

  9. Mr. H. Fusion says:

    As tempting as some suggestions are, there is this thing in the Constitution forbidding “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”.

    I think the 9 years will do him some good. Put some hair on his chest. Make a man out of him. I’m surprised that there isn’t a hefty fine though.

  10. ECA says:

    9,
    AND can you find the millions he made??

    It will be where he wants it in 9-10 years.


0

Bad Behavior has blocked 5827 access attempts in the last 7 days.