Judge Sentences Spammer to Nine Years

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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Spam-Sentencing.html

A Virginia judge sentenced a spammer to nine years in prison Friday in the nation's first felony prosecution for sending junk e-mail, though the sentence was postponed while the case is appealed.

Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas Horne said that because the law targeting bulk e-mail distribution is new and raises constitutional questions, it was appropriate to defer the prison time until appeals courts rule.

A jury had recommended the nine-year prison term after convicting Jeremy Jaynes of pumping out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of Internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need.

Jaynes, of Raleigh, N.C., told the judge that regardless of how the appeal turns out, ``I can guarantee the court I will not be involved in the e-mail marketing business again.''

What? No death penalty?

― happy fun ball (kenan), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:00 (twenty years ago)

What I want is teh report on why the hell he was doing it. Why do people spam? surely no good can come of incomprehensible emails, completely lacking in grammar asking me for $10 to make my penis bigger.

― Craig Gilchrist (Craig Gilchrist), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:17 (twenty years ago)

Ten dollars can come of it.

― happy fun ball (kenan), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:22 (twenty years ago)

Um spammers get paid to create email lists to flood with bad advertisements by shady advertisers. I don't understand what's so complicated about that.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:23 (twenty years ago)

I love the idea that this guy is THE spammer, responsible for all spam.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:24 (twenty years ago)

Ten million emails a day is nothing to sneeze at.

― happy fun ball (kenan), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:24 (twenty years ago)

I think he's asking how the advertising can be nearly productive enough to warrant the effort. (And I suspect the answer is that there's so little effort involved that it doesn't much matter to them.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:25 (twenty years ago)

Exactly. If you were sending out ten million paper flyers a day, it wouldn't be worth doing. But email marketing has virtually no overhead. Even those 16 high-speed lines probably don't add up to much, if you get only a relative few people a day sending you money.

― happy fun ball (kenan), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:28 (twenty years ago)

Even if 0.01% of those mails are successful for an average of $10 that's $10,000 a day.

― Ed (dali), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:28 (twenty years ago)

And if it took you half an hour to do that work then you just made a nice wage.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:31 (twenty years ago)

It would be really really fascinating, though, to see some sort of breakdown of how often spamming results in sale, browsing, interest, or even opening the email or reading the subject line. It's possible that the ads bring lots of traffic to the website, but surely it's mainly in the form of teenagers laughing at the site copy for "cum increasement pills?" I only ordered one bottle, and then I got sick of doing that much laundry.

The 0.01% is still frightening, is the thing. I can see spamming working for porn sites and driving site traffic, but the idea of someone whipping out the credit card in response to a spam email ... even 0.01% would be kind of disturbing. This is the kind of work Montel Williams should be doing: I want to see a talk-show panel of men who actually bought "cum increasement" pills.

(Sorry, I am obsessed with this pill concept.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:31 (twenty years ago)

Nabisco, that's why the number one rule for fighting spam is never to buy anything from a spammer. But then I guess the kind of people who buy from spammers don't much mind spam, do they.

cf. the story of Ryan Pitylak

― happy fun ball (kenan), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:33 (twenty years ago)

Haha cum increasement.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:34 (twenty years ago)

damn activist judges! overriding the will of congress! how dare they do this.....oh wait.

― kingfish, Friday, 8 April 2005 19:37 (twenty years ago)

spam is most of the traffic on the internet nowadays isn't it? spammers are making a lot of money no doubt about that.

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:42 (twenty years ago)

bittorent is the biggest traffic generator.

SPAM is merely the biggest email traffic generator.

― Ed (dali), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:43 (twenty years ago)

xpost

I don't know about the internet, but estimates of spam as a percentage of all email sent hover between 75% and 90%.

― happy fun ball (kenan), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:44 (twenty years ago)

I should stop making porny-spam jokes; the truth, yeah, is that most everything I see these days is depressingly practical, offering me lost-cost prescription meds, home refinancing, etc. It's almost like a metaphor for the American 90s and the American 00s: back then it was all luxury-porn and sexual fantasy, now it's all about unemployment and lack of health insurance. Curses. I imagine old people might form a significant responding-market for the pharms stuff, as well as people trying to work their way into the medical gray market (cf running down to Mexico to buy recreational prescriptions and steroids and such).

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:49 (twenty years ago)

You'd have to be in a pretty poor position to refinance your house with a company that sends out spam, but these days my credit is poor enough that I almost understand!

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:50 (twenty years ago)

and this guy is old school, having multiple lines etc. What he needs is a russian trojan created botnet to do his spamming.

― Ed (dali), Friday, 8 April 2005 19:52 (twenty years ago)

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