* First spammer in the U.S. convicted of a felony
Jeremy Jaynes will forevermore be known as the first spammer in the U.S. to be convicted of a felony.
Earlier this month, Jaynes was convicted of violating Virginia’s anti-spam law, and he could face up to nine years in prison when he is sentenced in February. What came out at trial with regard to Jaynes’ operation, which by all accounts was not the most sophisticated operation of its kind, yields some interesting insights into the world of spamming.
For example, Jaynes’ response rate to his spam was on the order of only one sale per several tens of thousands of e-mail messages sent – yet his monthly income was as high as $750,000 in some months. When Jaynes registered Web sites, he used false information and he falsified message headers in his spam in an attempt to defeat spam-blocking systems, something many spammers do. Jaynes sent about 10 million e-mail messages every day, and all of the e-mail was sent from a single location in North Carolina, not through a network of zombie PCs that some spammers use to send their stuff. Interestingly, Jaynes began his career sending junk mail.
What landed Jaynes in so much trouble was actually not spamming per se, since the Virginia law under which Jaynes was convicted is similar to the CAN-SPAM Act that allows large-scale broadcast of e-mail. However, the fact that Jaynes used false headers and was in possession of names that were stolen from AOL helped to seal his fate. Also, the fact that AOL is located in Virginia probably gave state prosecutors some additional motivation to go after Jaynes.
While I am not a proponent of laws to stop spamming since I don’t believe they’re all that effective, I think that where they are useful is in taking out the most egregious, high-volume spammers and, possibly, dissuading others from spamming. If that’s all they end up doing, perhaps they will serve a useful purpose after all. As noted on a poster entitled “Mistakes” published by Despair, Inc.: “It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”
