Man jailed for nine years for spamming
12 April 2005
A man has been sentenced to nine years in jail in Virginia for sending junk emails.
Jeremy Jaynes, 30, is the first person in the US to get a prison term under anti-spam legislation. He is believed to have been the world's eighth most prolific spammer and sent billions of junk emails to web users through an America Online (AOL) server in Loudoun County.
He will remain free while his case is appealed and the court has postponed starting his prison term because the new laws raise questions about sending bulk emails. Under Virginia law, sending bulk email using fake addresses is a crime.
Jaynes, from North Carolina, earned up to $750,000 (£398,000) per month sending up to 10 million unwanted emails a day, selling products such as a "Fed-Ex refund processor", which he claimed allowed people to earn $75 an hour by working from home. His sentence is the harshest handed down so far for sending junk email in the US.
Prosecutor Lisa Hicks Thomas said: "It was not just sending bulk emails, he was, disguising the origin. The end user couldn't say: don't send this to me." She welcomed the ruling and said she hoped it would be upheld.
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