James Schaffer and Jeffrey Kilbride ran an international
pornographic spam business.
Experts at IT security and control firm Sophos have welcomed
news that two men have been sent to jail for over five years each
for their part in an international spam gang which bombarded
innocent internet users with sexually explicit images.
A federal judge sentenced Jeffrey A. Kilbride, of Venice,
California, to six years in prison and his associate James R.
Schaffer of Paradise Valley, Arizona, to five years and three
months in jail. The two men were found guilty of charges including
violating the CAN-SPAM act, conspiracy, money laundering, fraud and
transportation of obscene materials. Kilbride received a higher
sentence from US District Judge David G Campbell after the court
ruled that he had tried to prevent a government witness from
testifying at the trial.
Spam sent by Schaffer and Kilbride resulted in America Online
receiving more than 600,000 complaints from users between 30
January and 9 June 2004. The spam messages were sent out to promote
hardcore pornographic websites.
The two men used a variety of tricks to try and hide their
whereabouts from the US authorities. These included logging in
remotely to servers based in Amsterdam to try and make their spam
messages look like they originated from outside the USA, and using
bank accounts in Mauritius and the Isle of Man.
"Spamming is a big money earner for cybercriminal gangs who have
no qualms about swamping email inboxes with offensive messages or
breaking into innocent people's PCs," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "The authorities have sent a
strong message to spammers that their activities will not be
tolerated. If you send spam then you are running the gauntlet of
spending years locked in a prison cell."
In addition to the jail sentences, each man received a fine of
$100,000 and ordered to pay damages to AOL of $77,500. The
authorities are also seizing over $1.13 million in revenues
gathered by the criminal gang.
Other members of the gang, including work-at-home "mom"
Jennifer Clason, Andrew Ellifson of Scottsdale, Arizona, and
Kirk
Rogers of Manhattan Beach, California, pleaded guilty to
charges and turned state's evidence against Kilbride and
Schaffer.
More information about the sentencing of Kilbride and Schaffer
can be found on the Department of
Justice's website.
Sophos recommends companies protect themselves with a consolidated solution which can control network access and defend
against the threats of spam, hackers, spyware and viruses.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.