LEESBURG, VIRGINIA - A man in North Carolina whom anti-spam organizations call one of the world's 10 most prolific spammers has been sentenced to nine years in jail.

Jaynes was convicted of sending millions of unsolicited e-mails that peddled pornography or sham products, such as the "FedEx refund processor" that supposedly allowed people to earn $75 an hour from home.

Prosecutors said Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders in one month for the processor, each for $39.95 US.

The prosecution had asked for the maximum 15 years. Prosecutors said Jaynes was making $500,000 US a month from his spamming activities and had assets of $24 million US.
Source


<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00">Always wondered if those FedEx refund processor actually worked. Never bothered to apply for any of them though. Must have been a scam though. WOW, $500,000 US a month for spamming!!!</font>

[ 04-08-2005, 05:18 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

Hell, I might start if you get that type of money!

About time too! I wish America would let some of them be extradited though, it's been a safe haven for these spammers for far far too long. And yeah, it is tempting! I would imagine that there are many 'small fry' who simply do not operate on this scale and therefore don't make anything like this amount.

<font color = lightgreen>The subject of spam raises very interesting questions. Most people don't like spam because they are "unsolicited e-mails"; however, commercials on TV are unsolicited but we blindly accept those--there are even award shows for commercials! [img]graemlins/saywhat.gif[/img] Why is spam even illegal--it's only capitalism at its most pure. If you don't want it, get a good spam-blocker.

The people who sent in $39.95 for his product don't deserve any money back--if you fall for a scam you deserve to lose your money. :rolleyes: </font>

Virginia law doesn't make spam illegal, it makes hiding the origin of the emails illegal. AFAIK most of the other state laws are similar, not making spam itself illegal, rather they add requirements that it must follow.

[ 04-09-2005, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: Seraph ]

There are also many costs from spam which do not apply to TV ads.

1) Time - firms lose an incredible amount of time and money sorting through them

2) Inappropriate material in the inbox of a under-18 year old.

3) Bandwidth costs - both for people having to download it and for the network backbone itself

4) Congestion - I think there are more spam emails than normal emails now - that is a *lot* of traffic to deal with.

<font color = lightgreen>Thank you, Seraph. That certainly clarifies the issue for me. [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

edit: A thought just occurred to me. Perhaps I don't know enough about these things, but I didn't think it was possible to block the IP address of the origination server. Maybe that information is overwritten by all the "middle-man" servers through which the spam is filtered.... Anyone have further information on this?

I won't dispute those listed items, shamrock_uk. You would think that a cost-effective method for dealing with spam would have been invented by now. I suppose businesses could institute some sort of limited access to their e-mail system: similar to the old practice of presenting one's calling card at the front door to ask permission to enter a residence, you send an initial "I (or we/our organization) would like to e-mail you/your company; might we have permission to do so?" message. This message could be accepted or denied. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] </font>

[ 04-09-2005, 03:58 PM: Message edited by: Azred ]