Spammers to Get Prison Time

Just when I thought spamming would never end a story comes out today about a Brooklyn man who plead guilty to spamming 1.2 million AOL subscribers. 26 year old Adam Vitale pleads out today in a Manhattan Federal Court to breaking the anti-spam laws. Vitale was caught making a deal with a government informant who sent spam mails advertising a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the product's profit. One has to wonder how lucrative these activities must be in order to risk prison time.

Money Talks

According to a story from Reuters via Yahoo! prosecutors discovered Vitale and another man, Todd Moeller, using several different servers to relay emails and changing the email headers to avoid detection. Moeller told the snitch that he had 40 different servers to send spam from and that he made $40,000 a month other spam emails promoting stocks. (Now I know where those suckers come from).

Paying the Piper

According to the indictment in less than a week in 2005 Vitale and Moeller sent emails for the informant to over 1.2 million AOL subscribers. The defendants will be sentenced on September 13^th and could receive a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison. The anti-spam laws have provided fodder for a host of suits that might not otherwise have had a venue for grievances. Such notable Web 2.0 entities as MySpace and Facebook have sought relief under these codes, but this is the first news we have seen with regard to government intervention against "mass mailers".

Tough for Spammers?

The news is good for everyone who has been the target of unsolicited email over the years. I am not sure about the penalties, as these 11 years seems a little extreme even for a spammer. I am the world's biggest advocate of rules that protect people from harassment, perhaps AOL being in the mix will have something to do with the sentencing. At worst, people attempting to circumvent filters will perhaps think twice before offering me "Billy Bobs Garage" stock as the "hot" commodity to watch.