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| The jury recommended that Jeremy Jaynes, 30,
receives a 9 year jail sentence. |
A brother and sister who sent junk email to millions of America
Online customers have been convicted in the USA's first felony
prosecution of spammers.
Prosecutors told the court that Jeremy Jaynes, 30, and his
sister Jessica DeGroot, 28, used bulk email to market fake products
such as a "FedEx refund processor" for $39.95. This product was
supposedly capable of earning people working from home $75 an hour.
In one month alone, Jaynes received orders for the product
totalling almost $400,000.
The jury recommended that Jaynes receives a jail sentence of 9
years, and that his sister - who helped Jaynes process credit card
payments - should be fined $7,500, after convicting them both of
sending emails with fraudulent and untraceable routing
information.
Jaynes, who sometimes used the pseudonym Gaven Stubberfield, is
said to have built up a fortune of $24 million selling products via
spam.
"Spammers make the lives of regular internet users and
businesses a misery by clogging up email boxes with junk mail. The
reason why spammers do it is because of the huge profits that they
can make peddling their products," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "The criminal conviction of
Jeremy Jaynes sends out a strong message to other spammers that
their activities are not going to be tolerated."
Formal sentencing of Jaynes and DeGroot is scheduled for
February 2005.
Sophos recommends companies protect themselves with a consolidated solution which can defend against the
threats of both spam and viruses.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.