US porn spammers convicted
Two found guilty of CAN-SPAM breaches.
A federal jury in Phoenix, Arizona, has found two men guilty of two charges of violating the US CAN-SPAM
regulations, as well as other charges including fraud and money laundering.
The two men, Californian Jeffrey Kilbride and Arizona citizen James Shaffer, both 41, are thought to have started
their spamming business, promoting porn sites, in 2003 and made as much as $2 million from the operation. When the
CAN-SPAM laws came into effect in 2004, they started using servers based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in an attempt to bypass
the regulations, and also used companies set up in Mauritius and the Isle of Man to hide their financial traces.
Use of domain names registered with fraudulent information and spoofing email headers meant the men fell foul of the
CAN-SPAM acts requirements for openness and traceability. After a three week trial the two have been found guilty
on all counts, and at their sentencing in September could face up to five years jail time for each CAN-SPAM count
and another 20 years for the money laundering charges.
'This is a significant step forward in the fight against spam,' said John
Hawes, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. 'These men tried to use the global nature of the internet to
get around the local focus of spam laws, but have been brought to book and should hopefully face appropriate
penalties for their crimes. This should send a strong message to other spammers that their behaviour will no
longer be tolerated.'
Full details of the decision are in a release from the US Department of Justice,
here.
26 June 2007
Tags:
legal, sentence, spam.
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