Virginia Court Convicts Spammer - NC Man to get Nine Years

In what is hopefully the first of many cases, a CNET News article reports that a North Carolina man and his sister became the first two people convicted of a felony for sending fraudulent unsolicited commercial e-mail -- otherwise known as SPAM.



Jeremy Jaynes and Jessica DeGroot were convicted in a Virginia court Wednesday of sending AOL users millions of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages with falsified routing information to evade AOL's filters. Jurors recommended that Jaynes receive nine years in prison and fined DeGroot $7,500, according to news reports. A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski, was acquitted.



Jaynes, who used the alias Gaven Stubberfield , was ranked by watchdog group The Spamhaus Project as the eighth-most prolific spammer in the world when he was arrested last December.



DeGroot and Rutkowski appear to be let off too easily. Both Jaynes and Rutkowski were facing up to 20 years in prison and $10,000 in fines under the indictment brought by Virginia attorney general Jerry Kilgore in December 2003. Kilgore said the state also would seek to recoup profits from the spam.



Here is a mug shot of Jaynes, complements of MugShots.com. They describe him as a "dorky-looking geek".