Trial and retribution
Former AOL employee Jason Smathers sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for selling customers' email details to spammers.
Former AOL employee Jason Smathers has been sentenced
to 15 months imprisonment for selling customers' email
details to spammers. The 25-year-old former software
engineer pleaded guilty in February to stealing at least 92
million screen names from AOL's database and selling the
information to an associate (whose criminal charges are
pending). Smathers was also ordered to pay $83,000 in
compensation, but escaped the maximum 15-year prison
sentence and $500,000 fine thanks to a plea bargaining
agreement made earlier this year.
Meanwhile, AOL has been organising a sweepstake for its
members with some very special prizes: assets it has seized
from a 21-year-old New Hampshire spammer. The swag
includes a luxury Hummer H2 vehicle, $75,000 in cash and
$20,000 in gold bullion (see http://corp.aol.com/press/
media_spammersloot.shtml for photographs).
Last year the
company made a similar very public demonstration of its
tough stance against spammers when it raffled a Porsche
Boxster which it had acquired as part of a settlement against
yet another spammer. The company's message to would-be
spammers reads: 'AOL will find you and sue you. And AOL
will do everything it can to make sure its members end up
with any money you made as a spammer.'
30 August 2005
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