A brother and sister in the US have been convicted of sending hundreds of thousands of unsolicited email messages - or spam -to AOL subscribers. It is the first criminal prosecution of internet spam distributors. Jurors in Virginia recommended that the man, Jeremy Jaynes, serve nine years in prison and that his sister, Jessica DeGroot, be fined $7,500. They were convicted under a state law that bars the sending of bulk emails using fake addresses. They will be formally sentenced next year. A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski, was acquitted.
Prosecutors said Jaynes was "a snake oil salesman in a new format", using the internet to peddle useless wares, news agency Associated Press reported. A "Fed-Ex refund processor" was supposed to allow people to earn $75 an hour working from home. Another item on sale was an "internet history eraser". His sister helped him process credit card payments. Jaynes amassed a fortune of $24m from his sales, prosecutors said. "He's been successful ripping people off all these years," AP quoted prosecutor Russell McGuire as saying. |