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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