Posted by Virus Bulletin on Oct 15, 2007
Strong sentences for CAN-SPAM breaches, money laundering.
Two US men found guilty in June of breaching the terms of the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act, as well as numerous other charges including money laundering and witness tampering, have been sentenced to spend over five years in jail for their crimes. They are the first to be convicted under the US spam control regulations.
The two 41-year-olds, one from California and the other from Arizona, will pay fines of $100,000, as well as a $77,500 restitution charge to AOL, and must forfeit over $1 million from the profits of their long-running porn spamming operation. The outfit was behind over half a million spams in the first half of 2004 and drew over 1.5 million complaints from recipients of their unwanted graphic emails advertising porn sites.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) estimates the criminal business made 'over $1 million' in profits, and some sources have put the figure at closer to $2 million. To avoid the clutches of the law after the introduction of the CAN-SPAM act, the pair routed their mails through servers in the Netherlands, and set up shell companies in Mauritius and the Isle of Man to hide their finances. The Californian Jeffrey Kilbride received a sentence of 72 months, more than his partner James Shaffer's 63 months thanks to attempts to silence a witness.
A full statement on the sentencing from the US DoJ can be found here.
Posted on 15 October 2007 by Virus Bulletin
