Meet Millionaire Spammer Jeremy Jaynes 379
prostoalex writes "Associated Press profiles Jeremy Jaynes, charged with sending out unsolicited e-mail messages, who just got a 9-year jail term recommendation from the state jury. With the help of 16 'high-speed' lines (Associated Press probably meant T1s) Jaynes would send out 10 million e-mails a day. His best month in terms of gross income netted him $750,000. Acccording to the article, 'In a typical month, prosecutors said during the trial, Jaynes might receive 10,000 to 17,000 credit card orders, thus making money on perhaps only one of every 30,000 e-mails he sent out. But he earned $40 a pop, and the undertaking was so vast that Jaynes could still pull in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead, McGuire said. "When you're marketing to the world, there are enough idiots out there" who will be suckered in, McGuire said in an interview.'"
There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:5, Interesting)
This Jeremy is reportedly earning $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead.
Imagine if you can work 1 year without getting caught, and wisely transfered your incomes to safe place, you are basically earning $1 million a year by sitting in the prison doing some workouts, or even get a law degree specialised in anti-spam. And you wonder why there are more spams everyday?
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if you can work 1 year without getting caught
Imagine if you could work your whole life without getting caught. Because that was the situation before this verdict. Of course there are still strong financial incentives to spam, but with verdicts like this one, the incentives become weaker.
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't apply a "fairly harsh penalty for spamming"; it applies a fairly harsh penalty for fraud. Had he been selling a legitimate product, his prison sentence would have been much shorter if he even received one at all.
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:2)
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:4, Informative)
Besides, (Score:2)
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:2)
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:3, Funny)
And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanes
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:3, Insightful)
It was mainly due to the fact that the scum was peddling fraudulent "products". He conned a shitload of people with his MMF schemes and other frauds.
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:4, Interesting)
People go to jail for much less money... and since there are loopholes to be found and exploited, spamming is an attractive business.
Corporations contract out for spyware programs. Political groups contract out for viruses. If the money is there, it will be a temptation. You can't end if forever, but you can make it harder to do and much riskier.
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends (Score:5, Interesting)
Now there's been stories on
It's not a winnable war as in someday all spam will suddenly stop and no one will ever try again, but it's winnable in that between lawsuits, jail terms, and better filters we can make it a much less attractive bussiness.
Re:Depends (Score:2)
And you know what people those messages are likely to get to? Those who don't have spam filters, and so likely those people who don't understand it, and therefore... Ding Ding Ding... those people who are most likely to become "customers."
I suppose that spam getting filtered out at the ISP, companywide, or campuswide level would probably cut out access to a fair number of marks, though.
That's the real difference (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not the case with spam. People don't want it, in fact even most of those that buy from it hate it (they are just suckers). Also there aren't huge returns per spam, just a large volume of it.
So if the retu
Re:There's one spammer born every second, too (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry thing is, the same people will probably fall for these as fell for this guy's scam.
You've got mail! (Score:5, Funny)
9 years in the slammer getting unsolicited gifts from Bubba? Wow! I bet at least one of the jurors purchased a penis enlarger and, let's say, wasn't totally satisfied with the results...
Re:You've got mail! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You've got mail! (Score:2)
Re:You've got mail! (Score:3, Funny)
You've got MALE!
FYI, if you don't RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Mind you, the spammer will know that people are idiots
C.R.E.A.M (Score:4, Insightful)
ooh (Score:2)
whatever you do, always make sure you make spamming attractive to those of us who are short on money. cripes.
Shit, tomorrow's inbox... (Score:4, Funny)
EARN $300,000 to $750,000 PER MONTH working from the PRIVACY of your own HOME!!!!
JEREMY JAMES did IT, SO CAN YOU!!!!!!!
THIS is NOT a SCAM, It REALLY works!!!!!
FOR MORE information MAIL TO make_millions.com
AOL addresses (Score:5, Funny)
Prosecutors don't know how he got the lists, though McGuire said the AOL names matched a list of 92 million addresses an AOL software engineer has been charged with stealing. However Jaynes got them, they were particularly valuable because AOL customers and eBay users by their very nature have already shown a willingness to engage in e-commerce.
Or particularly valuable because AOL users are, well, AOL users?
Some additional details... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1828341p-8
Yes - they were T1 lines.
Re:Some additional details... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Some additional details... (Score:2)
How does this work? (Score:2)
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Informative)
The work-at-home 'offers' are merely "Here is a list of companies. Write to them and see if they'll hire you to work at home"
or stuffing envelopes. What you really end up doing is stuffing envelopes with "Here is how to make money stuffing envelopes. Please send $19.95"
Technically, what you've gotten is what you ordered. But what you ordered was not-quite-legal.
Re:How does this work? (Score:2)
Re:How does this work? (Score:5, Informative)
The other problem lies in getting a refund once you've figured out that you've been ripped off.
Mr. Jeremy Spammer isn't a wholesaler, but merely a cashier. He has no inventory. You send your money to him, he takes his cut and moves the order on the the actual seller. They send you the 'stuff'. You want your money back, but the only contact is who you sent the money to, Mr. Jeremy Spammer. He has since moved onto a different business name and contact info. You have little chance of getting a refund.
J. Spammer has his cut, the wholesaler has their cut, and you have a tube of goo.
Some quick math: (Score:5, Interesting)
$40 per order
1 order per every 30,000 spam
est. $24,000,000 net worth = 600,000 orders = 18,000,000,000 spams
9 years jail time = 283,824,000 seconds
So the ratio is 63.4 spam messages per second of prison time
Sounds fair to me (Score:2)
(Yes I know that's not how the sentence was arrived at).
what about the $? (Score:2, Interesting)
so..
will he still be a millionaire when he gets out of jail?
is he serving his sentence in min-sec alongside martha stewart?
maybe i should re-think my long-term investments, I could do 9 min-sec years for a few mil.
I'm a vegetarian, (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
9 years in jail is too light... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:9 years in jail is too light... (Score:3, Informative)
parasites (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:parasites (Score:2)
Re:parasites (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, I'm scratching my head on this one. Bush is President. A spammer just got 9 years in prison for spamming. So I guess the answer is yes?
Re:parasites (Score:2)
Re:parasites (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know anything about Karl Rove, but my experience has been that the majority of direct marketing associations don't like regular spammers.
Direct marketers would like to be able to send people emails as much as everyone else, and I'm not trying to argue that this is a good thing. There are many sorts of direct marketers, however, and not all of them want to spam as many people as possible using brute force.
But their reputation is damaged by spammers who use very shady techniques to market directly to people. eg. Faking headers, distributing via viruses or infected machines, routing email through China where SMTP servers may be less secure, redirecting bounce messages to fake addresses (often innocent unsuspecting people with email accounts) essentially trying to hide the source of their emails, and selling illegal products.
Whichever way you spin it, these aren't ethical business practices, and if they're not against the law then there are a lot of legislators who would like to shut them down if it could be done cleanly.
I'm pretty sure that most direct marketers would like this person to be stopped as much as everyone else, simply because he's not doing them any favours by making people dislike direct marketing.
Re:parasites (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be a great day indeed when our only complaint about the American Justice Department is that it didn't prosecute spammers agressively.
Jeremy
Penis enlargement (Score:5, Funny)
Another one born every minute (Score:2)
We now have clinching proof that there exist at least 200,000 complete suckers in the world.
Next SPAM Msg (Score:2, Funny)
Humanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I think, 'Oh, wait. Human beings. Guh.' And I get depressed. Because I'm one of them, which makes me just as vulnerable to some new scam that has a bit more intelligence behind it...
9 Years is Not Enough (Score:5, Informative)
His attorney can argue free speech and the unconstitutional aspects of the CAN-SPAM act all he wants, the fact remains that he misled people using spam and sold them products and services of no value whatsoever.
Crime does indeed pay, and this shows it pays handsomely. Now the courts need to AGAIN provide some negative reinforement of that fact and lock this clown away with Andrew Fastow and the rest of the classic white collar criminals.
Idiots? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those "idiots" often being trusting elderly people who don't know any better,perhaps your mother, your father, your grandmother.
Re:Idiots? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, y'know, twenty, thirty, forty years ago, these elderly people were adults in the prime of their lives. And fraudsters selling snake oil are not exactly a new phenomonon.
How old do you have to be before you stop being an idiot and start being a trusting elderly person who doesn't know any better?
The sentencing (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, think about getting 9 years cut off your life. It's a very long time. And he only sent out some bulk advertising.
The issue here is how cultures and nations view people. In Denmark, the focus is on treatment of both criminals and their victims -- it's not just an issue of retaliation against the criminal. In the same spirit, noone (or only a miniscule minority) in Denmark wants the death penalty, it's totally against the danish way of thinking.
This is one of the reasons I like living in Denmark. In my mind, it's the mark of a modern nation to make an effort to resocialize criminals -- it's backwards to only say 'an eye for an eye'.
Re:The sentencing (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the reason for our criminal punishment system in the US has always been and still is compensation for the victim and/or victim's families, and as a plain simple punishment to those who have done wrong. As you so aptly put, "An eye for an eye", is just the way most people see things here. American's LOVE justice! They love to hate criminals, and they love to punish them. That is, until they find through the varying circumstances of life that they are all of sudden on the other side of the criminal fence, be it a speeding ticket or a drunken bar fight. Why THEN, you've never seen such righteous indignation at the brutal inequality of our laws.
You're way may well be a better way of dealing with crime, but trust me, things are not changing around here anytime soon.
Re:The sentencing (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. He also committed fraud. He was selling products that he knew didn't do what he said they did.
Re:The sentencing (Score:5, Informative)
He got 9 years for criminal fraud because he was fraudelently selling goods. Basically everything he sold was a complete scam. He committed literally many many milltions of dollars in fraud (half a million dollars a month on average). The fact that he did this by scamming hundreds and thousands of people out of a small amount of cash instead of the usual where you scam a few people for vast sums of money each doesn't really make a difference in the total amount of harm he caused.
To some extent I agree, 9 years is harsh, but it is in line with the rest of US sentencing, which is equally harsh. Just keep in mind: 9 years in jail for multi-million dollar fraud, not 9 years in jail for bulk advertising.
Jedidiah.
How many years would Jesus do? (Score:3, Insightful)
And Ken Lay is still free... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the lesson here is that it's better commit fraud publicly on a massive scale -- and have friends in high places -- then it is to commit fraud quietly from your back bedroom.
Re:And Ken Lay is still free... (Score:3, Informative)
First the prosecutors went after Ben Glisan, Enron's treasurer. He's now Federal inmate #20293-179 at FDC Houston and is scheduled for release in 2008.
Once Glisan talked, the prosecutors went after Andrew Fastow, Enron's CFO, and his wife, who helped with those "offshore entities". She's now inmate #20290-179 at FDC Houston and is scheduled for release in 2005. Andrew Fastow has pled guilty and is "cooperating with prosecutors", whic
Re:And Ken Lay is still free... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, I hope my cynicism is misplaced this time, but savings and loan debacle of the eighties left me a bit jaded. They finally convicted a few of the high profile racketeers, but only sent them to a country club prison for a couple of years.
Before you knew it, they were out writing books and teaching econom
Several questions worth considering (Score:4, Interesting)
2) How did he hook into the internet with 5 high speed lines that did nothing but send email all day? Surely this traffic could be detected and blocked at the source.
3) How come spam doesn't burn out like a pyramid scheme? Surely the number of gullible people are finite. All of these spammers use the same lists. There has to be a point where every single person spammable has been reached. And surely by the gigantic volume we all get we must be close to that point.
Re:Several questions worth considering (Score:3, Funny)
The stupid breed.
Hey, with all that spam for viagra, penis enlargement and porn paysites, it really shouldn't come as a surprise.
Penalty for spammers (Score:5, Interesting)
How does this sound?
Spammers don't get a fixed prison sentence. Instead, you put them in a prison cell that has an electronic lock with a keypad inside the cell. The combination is, say, twelve digits long, so there's no way in hell the prisoner can ever guess it.
Now you give the spammer a dumb terminal with shell access and an email account (incoming only) and no spam filtering. You send him the same amount of spam each day that he was sending out, except that one of the incoming emails will have the combination to the door. He has to find it himself. Until he can, he's stuck in the cell.
Poetic justice. Just as we regular users have to go to all this trouble with spam filtering and everything else, he'll have to go crazy looking for the combination that will allow him to regain his freedom.
Disproportion of punishment to crime... (Score:3, Insightful)
9 years in prison for what amounts to shoddy dealings.
Who was killed by Jeremy? Who was maimed by Jeremy? Who was raped by Jeremy?
Sure, fraud isn't nice, but wouldn't a more effective punishment, and deterrent for others, be to simply take away everything he's bought and accrued?
All money? Gone. All property? Gone. Divide it up and spread it around his home state's health and education services.
Make him bankrupt and let him get back on his feet like any other poor person with the threat hanging over his head that if he does one more illegal thing to do with fraud or money, then into prison he goes for a couple of years.
Murder, Rape, Arson, Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Armed Robbery... Things that actually do people or property physical harm can get less time than this.
His sentence isn't justice, it's ego-driven revenge.
Re:Disproportion of punishment to crime... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure you think it's reasonable when a multiple murderer gets multiple sentences, right? Ok, good. Next decide what you think an appropriate sentence for stealing $40 is. Ready? Let's do some math.
The articles are lacking in hard numbers, but suppose that this guy ran his operation for a year, and that he averaged 10,000 suckers a month. That would mean 120,000 people defrauded. So 9 years would mean circa 39 minutes of time served per victim.
And that doesn't leave anything left over for the millions of people bothered by his spam, the millions of dollars in other people's resources he consumed, the time consumed in many months of tracking him down, or the harm done to the fabric of trust that makes internet commerce possible.
So no, turning him loose and saying, "Naughty naughty!" doesn't seem like appropriate punishment. Especially given that this guy was a hardcore scammer for years, one who set up more than 30 fake companies to hide his dealings.
Dont post such profits to slashdot! (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure there will always be someone spamming our mailboxes, but put out the bait to the smartest bunch, and youve just made the world a miserable place (at least online).
The govt should post a reward of $700,000 for anyone who seeks and gets enough spammers to reduce online spam by 2% or something. Being on morality's side, greedy slashdotters could then clean up the Internet, at least in western countries.
In response to the ass-rape glee (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody deserves to be sexually abused. If you find torture exciting or a 'fitting' punishment, then you're a sadist.
Another thing to note is that he's not going to get gangbanged. Spamming is a non-violent crime. He'll get sent to a low-medium security prison.He's rich and that means he's protected in prison. All he has to do is pay the big man (if there is one at the country-club prison he goes to) a $100,000 a year and his ass will be protected 24/7/365. If there is no big man, he can buy himself a bodyguard or five.
And he'll get parole in 4 years unless he really misbehaves in prison.
He'll probably spend the next 4 years bored and wondering exactly how many ho's he'll bang and how many lines of coke he'll do, once he gets out. He'll probably be able to purchase both sex and drugs doing his time behind bars.
Re:Who's counting? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're the second person in this thread who expresses this point of view. Interesting (and sad) society we live in were it's deemed an acceptable option to serve time in jail as a paid job...
Personally, I'd rather starve in the street than go one minute in jail. I couldn't bear the shame...
Re:Who's counting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like somebody who's never starved on the street.
Re:Who's counting? (Score:2)
What shame? The shame of being wealthy for the remainder of your life without having to work again? While any prison isn't a cakewalk, he's not going to Rikers.
The jail time isn't the issue for him, as he'll only serve about 3 years anyway even if he gets 9. What he has to be concerned about is financial lawsuits. The state should be able to fine him huge amounts for what he's done, to the point of dr
Re:Who's counting? (Score:3, Insightful)
You illustrate my point very well, thank you.
Re:Who's counting? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Who's counting? (Score:3)
Especially if you have a wife and kids to feed.
How many ex-IT workers reading this agree? I feel shame going back to school at 27 and moving in with mom and dad again to pay the bills after companies decided not to hire Americans anymore for computer work.
Sure going to jail is bad but so is being abused by the consequences of capitalism.
I would never spam of course but if I had a kid and if my relationship with my gf became serious enough where sh
Re:Who's counting? (Score:2)
You really need to stop watching CBS.
Here's a clue for those not in the know: in the Reserves and National Guard, you are required to attend a certain number of drills per year. There was no year in which Bush did not meet his required minimum. Anyone who insists Bush was at any time AWOL either doesn't understand how the Guard works, or just wants to find something, somewhere, to slam him with, regardless of the truth.
Re:It makes no difference. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It makes no difference. (Score:2, Informative)
I've been using it for months for various customers in production networks. Free, written in Perl and runs on *nix or Windows. Can integrate with just about any mail server. I use it with Exchange. It also uses clamAV to do some basic virus filtering.
Not everyon has good filtering (Score:2)
As for not responding, well there are a lot of suckers out there. Not much you can do about that.
Re:It makes no difference. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It makes no difference. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It makes no difference. (Score:2, Interesting)
I won't be too specific on what
They are lawbreakers, prosecute them (Score:3, Insightful)
PLease read through the "Information about spam" llnks on this website, written at least eight years ago when spam was much less of a problem yet still as relevant today, and see you can still justify that statement:
http://spam.abuse.net/overview/
While that site also describes many peripheral issues involving content, the fact is, regardless of content, spam is theft of Internet services.
Lets face the fact, at least in America, advertising always find
Re:These People Are Not Evil (Score:3)
Quite possibly, the most damning indictment of the human condition I've ever seen.
Re:These People Are Not Evil (Score:2)
Re:These People Are Not Evil (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You are mistaken. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahh, capital punishment, when 9 years of anal rape bundled with HIV and Hepatitis infection isn't enough.
Call me insensitive to your plight or whatever, but cleaning up a couple emails fucking pales in comparison to what this guy will experience in prison.
People get less time for murder.
Murder.
If you can't comprehend the difference, I really don't know how to explain it to you. I doubt you could even comprehend the diffe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:These People Are Not Evil (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, Fine (Score:2)
But, some of you make good points and amke note of things I did not think of. MAybe as it is, spammers do need to be criminalized. Maybe in the future we can des
Re:Ok, Fine (Score:2)
That should read, "OK, you have spoken and I maybe you're right, it is evil"
You know what, I tink I got the retard helemt on today. HAd a few beers, etc. Just not clicking today.
Tax spam? Won't work. (Score:3, Interesting)
The key distinction you're missing is that this fellow was committing fraud -- promising people jobs (if they'd pay some money up-front) and giving them lists of completely useless information, among other things. Mass email was just the mechanism. His prosecution, thus, was totally legit -- on that point alone!
Taxing spam would be difficult. Folks who are willing
Re:I wish ... (Score:5, Funny)
I think I can help you out. Send me $50,000 every month and I will send you $30,000 back.
"Think of the CHILDREN!" (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry, I don't have mod points right now, and I'd rather reply to these comments anyway.
While most will probably scoff at what I'm saying (mod me down, but read first if you don't mind), can you imagine the number of trees had this been a junk-mail business?
1. If it had been junk mail through the USPS, the sender would have paid for those threes, as well as the cost of turning them into paper, the ink, th
Re:Think of the Trees (Score:3, Insightful)
Spammers actually have used "save the trees" as a justification in the past. They try to distract attention away from the fact that what they do is theft, period.
Re:Think of the Trees (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Think of the Trees (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Hero of Canton (Score:3, Funny)
And he stole from the dumb
But now he's called 'Bitch'
As he's suckin' his thumb.
A hundred different ways
To get a shiv in the ribs,
A hundred different inmates,
Each shouting: "Dibs!"
The story of "The Spammer"
Was so previously sad
But with this new ending...
Well...
This one ain't that bad.
It's a start anyway.
Re:ISP suspicion? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Human beings are dumb (Score:4, Insightful)
I've pretty much lost hope for the species.
Is that why in your sig you're promoting a "free flat screen" to those suckers? Or were you trying to maximize the irony of the whole situation?