RSSAOL Spammer Sentenced to 15 Months
By Nate Mook | Published August 17, 2005, 1:59 PM
A former engineer for America Online who stole the usernames and over 92 million e-mail addresses of AOL members was sentenced Wednesday to 15 months in prison. Jason Smathers used the stolen data to send over 7 billion spam e-mails before selling the list to another spammer for $28,000.
The 25 year-old Smathers struck a plea bargain with the government to help track down fellow spammers and, in return, received a reduced sentence. As one of the first people to be prosecuted under a new federal antispam law, Smathers had faced up to 10 years in federal prison for his actions.
I think 15 months is reasonable, 10 years is too long. I'm 24 now, I've never been to jail, and I I'm sure that a year of life wasted is plenty...
That's not the only effect either, it's not like you just pick up where you left off when you are released. You must then find a place to stay, find work (which will be hard after having a history of federal crime, let a lone a misdemeanor), and suffer property loss, and friendship loss...
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|They should jail the entire company. No great loss to anyone there.
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|WTF! rms10 is right. he should get like 10 years.
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|15 months is not enough!
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|Doesnt matter if its a year or 10 years.....look at this guy...he is getting butt raped.
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|Did he get to keep the lap top? Laff, they need to add another 10 years on top of that, you'd get more time than that for just smoking in a non smoking area.... holy cow!
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|Wow, gotta love America! After a year long trial he gets 15 months in a minimum security prison with cable TV. I'm surprised they didn't just give him probation. Might as well have, that's pretty much standard in the Land of the Free. In Russia or Turkey he'd get life in a smelly prison. In China they would execute him a week after his arrest and then bill his family for the bullet.
Then again, it's not like I can sympathize with AOL users. You deserve to get 500 spam emails a day just for using that lumbering dinosaur of an ISP.
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|92 milion addresses for $28,000?
Wow...
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|I would think at least $1 per address. That way you could make the sell and move out of the country
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|"I would think at least $1 per address"
Should we forward your offer to him ?
The Computer Rodent
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|Yeah...at $28,000, it was roughly 1 cent per 33 people.
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|15 months in a health-spa, plus $28,000.
What's wrong with this picture?
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|Nope, under the law he loses all the money he made through spamming.
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|Prosecution pushed for $300,000 retribution but judge said that value was speculative... so prosecution only received $86,000 (3x).
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