The Spam Chronicles, Part III: Go To Jail, Do Not Pass Go
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 15 of October , 2007 at 4:44 pm
And don’t even bother collecting $200, or the $2 million you would have made.
Spammers are now getting jail sentences, which is pretty serious:
(Source) Jeffrey Kilbride, 41, of Venice California, and James Schaffer, also 41, of Paradise Alley, Arizona, were sentenced to 72 months and 63 months in prison, respectively, fined $100,000 and were ordered to pay $77,500 in restitution to AOL. They also were ordered to forfeit over $1.1 million in commissions they made spamming inboxes with pornographic emails.
This is pretty wild. It makes me wonder who will go down in history as the biggest cyber criminal - you know, the Al Capone of cyberspace. Instead of bootlegging, it’ll be spam.
Some of the co-conspirators in this case actually turned state evidence against Kilbride and Schaffer in exchange for lighter sentences. Not a bad deal. Break the law, tell me who helped you, and we’ll go easy on you. I guess that makes spam just like any other crime.
The spammers went so far as to set up shell corporations in other countries and send spam from Phoenix, Arizona through a redirect as if it was coming from Amsterdam. I guess they were really serious about sending out those spam notices. And they had to pay AOL for damages.
I can see a day when spam will be prosecuted multiple times for the same crime. Since every nation has its own laws, a spammer or other cyber criminal who breaks laws in more than one nation could potentially face charges in every nation affected by the crime. That would effectively be the end of double jeopardy, a protection for criminals so that they aren’t charged with the same crime twice. But since there is no international government agency or laws in place to protect criminals from being charged with the same crime more than once … well, it’s just a matter of time.
Kind of makes you think twice before breaking the law, huh?
Category: SEO
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