Phisher gets six years
Californian receives 70-month prison sentence, avoids 101 years behind bars.
A Californian man, found guilty in January this year of operating a phishing scheme aimed at
scamming thousands of AOL users, has been sentenced to 70 months in prison.
45-year-old Jeffrey Brett Goodin was found guilty of sending thousands of
emails to AOL customers. The emails were designed so that they appeared to have been sent by AOL's billing
department, and required recipients to provide personal and credit card information
at web pages that were, in fact, fake and under Goodin's control. Goodin then used
the information he received to make unauthorized purchases.
The total potential sentence for Goodin, who was also was found guilty of 10 other counts including: wire fraud,
aiding and abetting the unauthorized use of a credit card, misuse of the AOL trademark, attempted witness
harassment, and failure to appear in court, was a 101-year prison term. While
prosecutors pushed for a minimum sentence of 94 months, Goodin got off relatively lightly after the judge
factored in mitigating circumstances, such as his lack of a criminal history, and ordered him to serve only a 70-month prison term.
Also this week, Brooklyn spammer Adam Vitale pleaded guilty to spamming 1.2 million AOL customers in August 2005.
Vitale and his co-defendant Todd Moeller were rumbled when they contacted a government confidential informant via
IM, agreeing to send spam advertisements for a product in exchange for half of the profits. The pair then sent
around 1.2 million unsolicited emails to AOL, employing relays and changing header information on the emails to conceal the source of the spam.
Vitale is due to be sentenced in September this year, facing a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. His
co-defendant, Todd Moeller, awaits trial.
14 June 2007
Tags:
aol, legal, phishing, sentence.
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