A family that spams together, stays together... in jail

The first felony conviction for spam comes this week. The brother went to jail and the sister was fined. A third person involved was let go entirely.
From the article:

Jurors recommended that Jeremy Jaynes, 30, be sentenced to nine years in prison and fined Jessica DeGroot, 28, $7,500 after convicting them of three counts each of sending e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information.

The article claims that they were making $390K a month and had amassed $24M from their "worthless products". Whether they were actually worthless doesn't seem to be the point here, but instead how they marketed them - via spam.

In reaction to the jail term:

"Nine years is absolutely outrageous when you look at what we do to people convicted of crimes like robbery and rape," Oblon said.

I am torn on this. While I think something more than a slap on the wrist (which is what a $7,500 fine against them is if they really had $24M) is certainly appropriate - 9 years in jail is kind of intense for spam.
That said, the jury is clearly fed up with getting spam. We all are. It is to the point now where people are angry and want to see people punished.

I'm not sure that I have all of the answers, and I wonder if the article gives us the whole story, but I think too question that long a sentence for "just" spamming (it is entirely possible that there were other scams involved).

Posted by Eric at November 4, 2004 11:05 PM | TrackBack