URL: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5438340.html

North Carolina man sentenced to 9 years for spam

Reuters
November 3, 2004, 6:04 PM PT

A North Carolina man was
sentenced to nine years in prison for sending hundreds of thousands of unwanted
e-mail messages, Virginia prosecutors said Wednesday.

Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh was found guilty under a Virginia
state law that sets limits on the number of e-mails marketers can send in a
given time period and prohibits them from using fake e-mail addresses, Virginia
Attorney General Jerry
Kilgore said.

Jaynes' sister, Jessica DeGroot,
was also found guilty and fined $7,500, Kilgore said. An associate, Richard Rutkowski, was found not guilty.

Jaynes, who used the alias Gaven
Stubberfield, was ranked by watchdog group The
Spamhaus Project as the eighth-most prolific
spammer in the world when he was arrested last December.

The messages sent out by Jaynes advertised penny
stocks, low mortgage rates and software to erase Internet browsing records,
Virginia officials said. Jaynes sent out more than
100,000 such messages over a 30-day period in July and August 2003 in violation
of state law, according to the charges.

DeGroot was convicted after prosecutors proved that
she used her credit card to help the operation.

"This is a major victory for Virginians and all Americans," Kilgore
said in a statement. Jaynes' attorney was not
immediately available for comment.

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

Roughly 50 percent of the world's Internet traffic passes through Virginia,
home to big Internet companies like MCI and Time Warner's America Online unit.

Many forms of spam are also illegal under a national law that took effect in
January.

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2004 Reuters
Limited.  All rights reserved.