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Spam Government The Courts News

Porn Spammers Get Five Years Each 187

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the cleaning-my-inbox-one-court-case-at-a-time dept.
PC World is reporting that 'California's Jeffrey Kilbride and James Schaffer of Arizona, have been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison. Both were convicted of conspiracy, money laundering, fraud, and transportation of obscene materials, according to The East Valley Tribune, a newspaper covering the case.' Because sometimes bad things happen to bad people.
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Porn Spammers Get Five Years Each More

Porn Spammers Get Five Years Each

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  • Woo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Aranykai ( 1053846 ) <slgonser.gmail@com> on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:36PM (#20987331)
    So how bout doing something about these Viagra 79% off October emails I get?

    This is a case of two idiots who got caught by trying to operate as a legit business. I really cant see this impacting the volume of botnet, spam spewing compromised computers out there...

    • Re:Woo (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:40PM (#20987399)
      So how bout doing something about these Viagra 79% off October emails I get?

      Are you kidding? I got a GREAT deal on that bottle of viagra. You should try it too! Sure I didn't get quite the hard-on I expected, but I got contacted by a friend of the viagra reseller, a Dr. Adewale Johnson from Lagos, who proposes to make me rich. I figure no scratch, no snatch, so I might as well go for it!

      Who said spam was bad?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by luder ( 923306 ) *
      What's the point of buying Viagra if there is no porn? They just got two rabbits with the same stone.

  • Extradite them to TEXAS!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:38PM (#20987345) Homepage
    We have the death penalty here! Bring'm on down!

  • Quoth bash.org: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stormx2 ( 1003260 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:39PM (#20987375)
    <Nash> YES!they caught the bastard who made the blaster virus
    <Nash> looks like he will be getting 10 yrs max in prison
    <DDR4life> serves him right
    <DROSS> Someone is soon going to discover how strangely painful the shower hour in prison is
    <FiringSquad> He'll probably catch a different type of virus in prison
    <LexiusTheGenuis> poor kids virginity is going to the recycle bin
    <Sczoyd> cellmates will probably be giving him some rather large uploads
    <Antibig> theyll be installing some new hardware in his rectum
    <FiringSquad> looks like his unprotected port is going to be probed
    <Sczoyd> I hope he doesnt mind other men using his hard drive
    <JSP> a roll like him is going to get rolled a lot
    <Sczoyd> his prison mates are going to have a lot of fun with their new laptop
    <ShinKurro> someone will find out a new way to spread viruses
    <Nash> okay, that wasn't really called for.
    • That's terrible.

      And I honestly think this penalty is a bit overboard, and I've never before been in favor of going easier on white collar crime than the courts do.

      These guys couldn't have cost anyone that much money with a bunch of spam emails. 5 years is just too much when you're talking about a crime that was basically very much in a grey area until recently and against the existence of which there is a strong argument.

      • Re:Quoth bash.org: --- nice, really nice (Score:5, Insightful)

        by p0tat03 ( 985078 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @05:32PM (#20988095)

        Five years is not too much? I say it's not enough. Do you have any idea the kind of computing resources individuals and companies alike have had to dedicate to spam filtering? How much is that costing the worldwide economy annually, or just the USA since this is where the crime "occurred"? How much productivity is lost yearly due to people having to delete these pestering messages from their inboxes? How much is lost when we're forced to tighten our filters and legitimate mail gets lost?

        These people have been a blight upon the internet since the day they started spamming, and the collective aggravation and productivity loss they've incurred should net them decades in the nearest penitentiary. This is especially true considering this is neither a crime of passion, nor desperation, and can only be accounted for by greed, which IMHO needs to be punished much more harshly than any other instigator of a crime.

        • Don't let something pesky like the first amendment get in the way of corporate economic productivity.
          • Just because you have a right to say it doesn't mean you have a right to force me to listen.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Five years is not too much? I say it's not enough.

          If harsh sentencing caused less crime, I'd be all for it. But it doesn't. It appeals to our sense of outrage and desire to punish those who abuse the system, but it doesn't really prevent further abuse. Look at places that have the death penalty or life sentences, or mandatory minimums for multiple offenders- crime and recidivism rates aren't different, even when penalties become draconian in the extreme. For example, despite increasingly draconian sent

        • Ridiculous! Cost of doing business in the age of technology! Maybe instead the nerds of the world should make some spam proof technologies rather than filling up prisons for the equivalent of dumping junk mail fliers in your mailbox. How many man hours are wasted by the USPO to sort/deliver that shit? And tax money is spent in the overall operation of the USPO, yet it's still legal! And there is no way solid way to stop it, whereas with spam, you can stop using a computer.

          Prison is a HUGE waste of money for

          • Maybe instead the nerds of the world should make some spam proof technologies rather than filling up prisons for the equivalent of dumping junk mail fliers in your mailbox.

            It is impossible to stop a communications medium for being used for advertizing by any technological means. Junk mail has a significant cost for the sender, so it has a natural limit on the amount of crap sent; e-mail, however, has no such natural limit.

            Prison is a HUGE waste of money for someone who hasn't committed a violent act.

          • "How many man hours are wasted by the USPO to sort/deliver that shit?" (Referencing snail mail flyers and other junk mail.)

            An invalid argument because the senders PAYS to have that junk mail sent. In the case of spam, the recipient and all nodes between it and up to/including the compromised botnet machine that sends the spam are bearing the cost of sending the spam message. The spammer pays nothing, and is stealing resources from others.

            That is theft. Theft is a prison-punishable crime.
        • I might agree, but only because of the money laundering and fraud; spam is a minor annoyance. I find billboards and television commercials infinitely more annoying, and they're perfectly legal. At least I can delete spam with minimal effort.

          At any rate, I highly doubt these fellows are responsible for all of the spam on the internet, or that they started the trend, so punishing them for the existence of spam filtering is sort of absurd.
        • Spam and viruses have created a massive industry.

          Take a look out Sophos' new HQ in my town. They know how to exploit an exploit.
          http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4552/136/1600/sophos.jpg [blogger.com]
      • Read the list of charges, lemming. Skipping over whether the spamming alone would have richly deserved that, there are still charges like money laundering and fraud. And you think that 5 years are too much for _that_?

        What do you propose, then? That we let fraud and money laundering run rampant, as we give convicted criminals a gentle slap on the wrist for that? Or maybe even a slap on the wrist is too brutal by your reckoning?

        Also, sad to rain some clue upon your bleeding-heart parrade, but:

        1. Fraud and mon

  • Reminds me of a quote from bash.org (Score:4, Funny)

    by Paktu ( 1103861 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:39PM (#20987387)
    "In a perfect world, spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra, and are looking for a new relationship."
    • They'll probably wish the let microsoft read their brain...

      I'm sorry, but it appears you are trying to download pronofarphic material. Would you like to:

      1. change topics
      2. plug ahead
      3. go to jail/prison
      4. ask me to repeat the statement

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by iamacat ( 583406 )
      So they should be safe if their products work as well as typical spam.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 )
      > "In a perfect world, spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra, and are looking for a new relationship."

      Hey, if the spammer didn't want his ass distended to Goatse-like proportions by a 300-lb ex-con nicknamed "Coke can", he should have opted out.

      And we're talking about the Direct Marketing Association's definition of "opt-out", namely "of course he has to opt-out separately for every pelvic thrust, otherwise there's a prior

  • But Does the Punishment Fit the Crime? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:41PM (#20987421) Journal

    Because sometimes bad things happen to bad people.
    And they should. But 'Does the punishment fit the crime?' is what constantly is asked. Does $220,000 in fines fit downloading 24 songs? The cases involving the internet seem to be outlandish often.

    Here are the details for this case that I found another site [slashdot.org]:

    Over nine months in 2004, Kilbride, Schaffer and an associate transmitted more than 600,000 spam messages, according to court documents. They were paid commissions based on the number of people who accessed the websites via the spam. Kilbride and Schaffer tried to make it seem as if they were sending messages from abroad by logging in to servers in Amsterdam. But those messages originated from Phoenix, prosecutors said. They were also ordered to forfeit $1.3m.
    So for sending 600,000 spam messages, they were each jailed for five years. The money means little to me since they had it from this spamming but the time in prison, I personally believe is a little harsh. I guess that's what the jury should have and did decide although I find myself not agreeing with jurors as of late in many cases involving my field of study.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by eclectro ( 227083 )
      Since they grossed USD$2 million from their porn spam, I would say that the fine is fair. Also, maybe if spammers knew that jailtime was involved with sending spam, there would be less of it. Lemme guess, you are related to the spammers?

    • Re:But Does the Punishment Fit the Crime? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @05:12PM (#20987841)
      So for sending 600,000 spam messages, they were each jailed for five years. The money means little to me since they had it from this spamming but the time in prison, I personally believe is a little harsh. I guess that's what the jury should have and did decide although I find myself not agreeing with jurors as of late in many cases involving my field of study.

      A fine without jail time is just "cost of doing business". It wouldn't deter that many people, it only sets up a extra cost center if they get caught. Jail time would be appropriate although I agree 5 might be too much. Rapists sometimes get off with 1 or 2 years of probation.

    • Re:But Does the Punishment Fit the Crime? (Score:5, Informative)

      by DreadSpoon ( 653424 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @05:21PM (#20987943) Journal
      They weren't jailed for spamming. They were jailed for all of the illegal things they did in order to send their spam. Most of it is sent from hacked computers, involves fraud, illegal accounting practices, and various other Real Crimes(tm) that have nothing to do with spam itself. They were jailed for the means they used to send the spam (and collect pay for it), not the sending itself. If they had just mass-mailed a bunch of people non-fraudulent emails from their own machines, it would have been a totally different punishment.
    • I don't really expect our legal system to have a cogent ordering, where worse crimes do more time. The legal code is a hash composed over decades. I'm sure there are plenty of worse crimes given lesser sentences and vice versa.

      Which makes it hard to say exactly what "fit" really means. Jail time serves many different purposes: punishment, vengeance, reformation, deterrence, and simply getting them our of our hair. I can't imagine what it means to optimize for all or any of those things.

      Personally, I thin

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Amouth ( 879122 )
      there is a diffrence between spam and ham.. if they give people a way to opt out and acutaly remove people that request it then the would not be in jail as that is what is required by law.. if they try to mask them selves and hide who they are and not give people the ability to opt out then they are breaking the law.. and knowingly doing it too..

      yes they should serve time..
      • Ham is legitimate email. UCE will never be considered ham.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Amouth ( 879122 )
          that is what i was saying.. this guy wasn't sending ham.. it was spam.. so throw him/them in jail
          • I misread what you said, it sounded like you meant UCE could be considered ham if it were sent in a proper fashion. I just mena it isnt just the fact that he used hacked systems etc, but in the end, regardless of method, the message and content is still UCE. Although that would result in lower penalties because less laws would be broken.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hawk ( 1151 )
      Their combined time works out to about 10 minutes per spam . . .

      hawk

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SCHecklerX ( 229973 )
      No, it wasn't that they sent 600,000 messages. It is that they did it FRAUDULENTLY. I doubt they'd have any jail time at all if they had sent from their own domain, with valid return addresses, etc. It's still sleazy, but at least it isn't fraud then.
    • [blockquote]I guess that's what the jury should have and did decide although I find myself not agreeing with jurors as of late in many cases involving my field of study.[/blockquote]

      As people get more and more specialized and cases get more and more technical, it becomes increasingly hard to be tried by a "jury of your peers". If someone actually was your peer they would likely be weeded out in the jury duty prescreening as someone with potential bias on the subject.

      All you can really do is show up when you

  • Why are spammers still alive? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrNiceguy_KS ( 800771 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:41PM (#20987429)
    It's a well-publicized fact that Chuck Norris does not use email. This is the only possible explanation as to why spammers are allowed to live.

  • so how much did they profit? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:42PM (#20987453)

    Harsh sentencing of Kilbride is credited to his attempts to prevent a witness from testifying at the trial. Kilbride received six years in prison and Schaffer received a 5-1/4 year sentence. Each was fined $100,000 and had to forfeit $1.1 million of their porn spam profits. They also had to pay $77,500 in restitution to AOL, which claimed 1.5 million of its customers complained about their spam.
    TFA says they made $2 mil so it sounds like they'll have around $600k +/-? I'm sure they weren't investing their profits at the time so the figure would more likely be a lot less than that. Sounds like they did not come out ahead in this con. Good.

    What really burns me is when someone rips off like $50 million in a white collar crime and the punishment is like 5 years in jail and a $500k fine. Shit, that's a better deal than working a straight job; better retirement, too.

    If these guys feel like they got fucked over here, they should consider what it's like being a spammer in Russia. :)

    • Re:so how much did they profit? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anagama ( 611277 ) <obamaisaneocon@nothingchanged.org> on Monday October 15, 2007 @05:05PM (#20987729) Homepage
      At $600k profit after the fine, that works out to $120k per year in jail. Split between them, that's $60k each per year. Not stellar pay, but not terrible either. Plenty of people would love to make that amount. If they invest their money while in the slammer, they should have a decent chunk when they get out (if they earn 5% per year, about $380k on graduation from prison each).

      In other words, I don't know if there is much deterrent value here. To someone making $15k per year at a crumby job, the risk/reward analysis will probably fall into the pro-spamming category. In fact, the whole headline may simply work to attract more spammers, at least those who don't see the "punishment" as being all that harsh, so that we get more than two replacements for the vacancy left by this pair.
      • While $60k/yr is a decent payday, I'm don't think I would accept it for a year in federal pound me in the ass prison.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by OrangeCowHide ( 810076 )

        But jail would be a 24 hour a day 365 days a year job. That comes out to 8760 hours a year (plus 1 - 2 leap years, which I'll discount for the purpose of this post). The standard US man year is 2080 hours. So $60,000 per year is $28.85 an hour (rounding up). While their "job" will be $6.85 an hour (because remember they can't go home, or out for pizza, or a night out to the bar, etc at any point in the five years). That comes out to $14,248 at the standard 2080 hours in a man year.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by anagama ( 611277 )
          Except the don't have to pay room and board while locked up. Granted, the 5 years will suck, but when they get out, they'll have a chunk of change most people will only ever dream about. That's why I think the headline could increase the number of spammers. There are lots of people with no better hopes than that.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Burning1 ( 204959 )

        To someone making $15k per year at a crumby job, the risk/reward analysis will probably fall into the pro-spamming category.
        I think that anyone capable of operating a world class spamming organization would be qualified for a job that makes far more than $15K per year. Prison being what it is, I think most would rather do something that contributes to society for their $60K/year.

  • Holy crap?!!?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by svendsen ( 1029716 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:42PM (#20987461)
    How am I supposed to fine free teen porn on the internet without their emails? You act like there is some massive search engine where I could type in free teen porn and get hundreds of links or something...sad day today

    • MS if you are listening, if you want to beat google in the search engine market, give good "erotic" results. I can find everything I want about linux easily enough, but when I want to download some eh nature images to remind me that there is more then hardware, you get swamped with false results.

      Get live search to give proper results for porn, and googles days are numbered.

      • I swear, back in the day, searching on 'hotbot' for 'c programmers' would return results like

        C Programmers gone wild!
        Naked C Programmers! ...

        Does that count?
      • ... if you want to beat google in the search engine market, give good "erotic" results.

        Google gives just FINE erotic search results if you turn off "safe search".

        Go to image search and search for anything. You'll find a link to the safe search configuration at the bottom of the results page. Set it to show you everything and rerun your search. (If you've got cookies on it will also remember you turned it off when it does future searches.)

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by egoproxy ( 1114835 )

          Go to image search and search for anything.

          Google complies with Rule 34.

        • But check how much of this leads to endless linksites that link to link sites that lead to crappy paysites.

          This investation of fake sites who get in the way of real results is just most evident when searching for porn.

          Just because you find a lot of images through image search doesn't mean they link to anything good, oh sure, your average 12 yr old may be satisfied but as an old guy, my tastes have advanced beyond that.

  • So now the taxpayers are out about $500,000 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:45PM (#20987497) Homepage Journal
    since it costs roughly $50k/yr for prisoners, and we have 2 of them at 5 years....Prison is not the answer in this case. For a lot less money we could restrict them to house arrest, monitor their movement to enforce it, and ban them from contact with any personal computer unless needed for their job and approved by the feds. They still are punished, the taxpayers pay a lot less money, and they don't have to go to prison. If they violate that, THEN put them in jail, but I don't see how putting these 2 people, scum though they may be, in prison is really going to help anyone....or deter spamming for that matter. Prison should be for violent or repeat offenders only.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      but I don't see how putting these 2 people, scum though they may be, in prison is really going to help anyone...
      I agree. 2 bullets would be a lot cheaper.
      • Yes, but a swarm of volunteer Axe Murders would cost even less than that. As a matter of fact, maybe the state could take bids for the position.

        • Yeah, they could sell them on eBay.

          Oh, and by the way:
          Dear eBay user "the state",
          eBay Customer Support Team requests you to complete eBay user confirmation form.
          This procedure is obligatory for all users of eBay.
          Please click hyperlink below to access user confirmation form.
          http : / / userconfirmationform-id440683. ebay.com / userdirectory / eBayISAPI.dll
          Thank you for choosing eBay.
          **This mail generated by an automated service.**

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by norton_I ( 64015 )
      Does the house arrest and monitoring cost that much less than $50,000/year? It seems that if you actually paid enough attention to see that they were not violating the terms of the house arrest, it would cost more.

      Also, they 50,000/year * 10 person-years = $500,000, but they are having $1.3 M confiscated, so it is still a net win.

      I think the prison system is messed up, and I am not sure what I think about this, but I am also not comfortable with putting a guy in prison for holding me up with a knife for my

    • ...And ban them from contact with any personal computer unless needed for their job and approved by the feds....

      But, but then they'd be forced to use Windows [slashdot.org]!

    • Re:So now the taxpayers are out about $500,000 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @05:50PM (#20988343)
      Prison should be for violent or repeat offenders only.

      I dont think the solution is less people in prison. Fraud, in my book, is a very serious crime. It sends senior citizens into the poorhouse. The problem is that society as a whole has given up the the idea of a debtors prison, where you work at something to slowly pay your way out of debt. In this case we can imagine every one of their transactions as fraud. They ripped off thousands of people. They owe them.

      In real life, debtors prison is a horrible idea, as is capital punishment. So that leaves lots of people with short jail sentences and oddball stuff like community service and jail-at-home.

      In my world, I think my tax dollars are used correctly to catch fraudsters. The money these guys are wasting is something in the neighbiorhood of one second of project time of some military porkbarrel crap that always runs through congress. I'd rather see pot heads released and fraudsters put in. America is wealthy enough to put fraudsters away.
      • Yes, because peddlers of porn are greatly disconnected from the world of violent crime? Guess you haven't been to many strip clubs lately.
    • You seriously don't see how this helps? It helps through deterrance, which, unlike what some people would want us to think does work. And before you do: please don't bring up stats that compare various countries to the USA. Various countries have varous cultures. What works in Finland doesn't work in China or the USA.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by HappyEngineer ( 888000 )
        Does increasing the punishment really increase the deterrence? Are there any studies that that actually happens in a non-trivial number of cases? I have a sneaking suspicion that the number of crimes prevented by increasing a punishment from 5 years to 10 years would be essentially 0.

        For me, being forced to live at home with no access to a computer at all would be a pretty terrible punishment. If I was a criminal then the possibility of prison would not be a greater deterrent because the lack of computer ac
      • Out of curiosity: if you ignore stats, then why do you think deterrence does work? Can you show any case where more severe punishments have resulted in less crime?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by halcyon1234 ( 834388 )
      Or we could ship them off to the middle of Verdant Wilderness, USA along with all the other ne'er-do-well, white collar criminals. Drop them in the middle of lush, fertile, farmable land that would otherwise go to "waste". Give them all the farming tools they'll need, access to potable water, a pat on the back and a good view of the helicopter flying away.

      And no computer. Or phone, or CB or anything.

      They can live off the land, and that'd be fine. Or they can organize into a farming community, and live

  • Don't crucify them (Score:5, Funny)

    by athloi ( 1075845 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:46PM (#20987511) Homepage Journal
    Or future religions will be based on copious proselytization of porn spam.

    • "Or future religions will be based on copious proselytization of porn spam."

      Don't laugh - what happens when religion decides to "spread the word" via spam, and then challenges any restriction based on the separation of church and state, and the 1st Amendment? They'll take the ISPs and spam filters to court (they have the $$$ and they're krazzzy enough to do it) for blocking them.

      • You make it sound like there's some organization of religious leaders who will get together to do this. Something tells me that we aren't going to see spaghetti monsterists, Christians (any denomination), Jews, Muslims (any denomination), Taoists, Buddhists, Jedis, Hindis, and whatever else you want to throw in there getting together to organize a spam campaign.

        If you're talking about Catholics or Southern Baptists, they definitely have the money and political power, and there's probably at least one nutjo
      • I really doubt that either separation of church and state or the 1st Amendment would apply, as long as the domain of the ISP in question doesn't end in .gov, .mil, or .edu.

  • Transportation of obscene materials? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mr.Fork ( 633378 ) <edward@j@reddy.gmail@com> on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:51PM (#20987569) Journal
    It's against the law? Oh right - the Miller Test [wikipedia.org]. As a Canuck, guess I'll have to blot out my anti-bush stickers on my suitcase. Not that I don't like bush - err.. the right kind of bush...not that there's anything wrong with it... or liking it...the right bush... never mind. :)

  • compare it to? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sckeener ( 137243 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @04:52PM (#20987587)
    I wish there was a database that I could compare the crime time with...

    I'd love to know if the time they will be serving will be equal to 1 gram of crack or cocaine.

    lucky for them they are in federal prison.
    • You can check out the Federal Sentencing Guidelines [ussc.gov] (effective as of November 1, 2006) if you'd like.

      Long story short? Possessing less than 5 grams of crack is 8 years, cocaine is 6 years. Any more and you also get intent to distribute.
  • These guys were pushing hardcore porno spam, from what I read. How about going after the domain owners as well? There's a lot of information that could be useful to know about the people they were whoring out spam for:
    • Who owns/owned the domain(s) that were spamvertised?
    • Where were the domains registered?
    • Where were the domains hosted?
    • Who was involved in the actual porn? Some people are suggesting kiddie porn?
    This information can help to determine if other laws were broken, and I'd suspect other laws were. If this operates like the usual internet drug scams that we see all the time, there were likely a large number of domains involved that were spamvertised. If we know where the domain owners were residing, they may also have committed crimes (particularly if they were selling kiddie porn). Similarly, if we can find this, we can see if the registrars that they purchased the domains from may have also been knowingly working with criminals (if they sold many, many, domains that served the same purpose). And did the ISP(s) hosting the domain(s) know what was being done? Who kept the WHOIS records?

    Likely the scam goes further than just these lame spammers. Whether or not the case will go any further, though, is anyone's guess.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wronskyMan ( 676763 )
      Unfortunately many of those type of sites are located in Eastern European/other countries with relatively lax law enforcement which makes it hard to go after the domain owners.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday October 15, 2007 @05:31PM (#20988087)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • "transportation of obscene materials"? That seems a little archaic and irrelevant nowadays...

      If this spam goes to your 10 year old son mailbox. It does not seem irrelevant to me.

  • Really a "Good Thing"? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't want to see anyone convicted of "transportation of obscene materials". Laws like that are arbitrary and ripe for abuse.

  • Porn Spammers Get Five Years - Saturday October 13, @11:26AM Rejected
    Interesting. I submitted this TWO DAYS ago, but it was rejected.

    No suckin' the right cocks I guess.

  • Ok... the 5,000th Viagra PMITA joke is still funny, but does anyone have more information about TFA's all-too-casual reference to the spammers' attempts to silence a witness, and its major contribution to their sentences? That seems like a too juicy a tidbit to be swept under the rug.

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