Jeremy Jaynes - Portrait of a Spammer


by Rob Dee - Date: 2007-03-07 - Word Count: 531 Share This!

Have you ever wondered just what sort of person sends spam? What type of person can nonchalantly annoy thousands of people every day and what is the gain for them? One of the biggest problems with spam is that it is a faceless crime - from both sides. To the spammer he has millions of faceless victims, he doesn't really think of the millions of addresses he spams as people, and he doesn't consider the aggravation his spamming causes. But it is also relatively faceless for us - the victim. We get upset at spam, but don't make the next step to being upset at the spammer. This is perhaps a telling sign at how much we have come to accept spam as something that just happens. In this article I will discuss one of the most public cases made against a spammer in recent times.

The spammer being convicted was Jeremy Jaynes. During the time he operated Jaynes was said to have sent hundreds of thousands of messages per day using T1 internet connections based in Virginia USA. The mail lists he used were said to have been stolen from high profile sites such as AOL and Ebay, and targetted American webizens.

Although he was a resident of North carolina, he was charged and tried in leesburg, Virginia, as he used servers in that state. He was charged alongside his sister Jessica DeGroot and Richard Rutkowski. Rutkowski was found innocent, DeGroot was fined $7500, which was later overturned, but Jaynes was imprisoned for 9 years.

Jaynes emails promoted primarily work at home schemes selling in the area of $40 each, and while only a tiny fraction of replies were received from the millions of messages he sent, it is estimated the business earned him in the vicinity of $750,000 per month. Reports of the fortune he gathered during his period of activity estimate his spamming activities to have gained him some $24 million.

Regretably this was enough to buy a very good defense team which successfully reduced the 15 year sentence sought by the prosecution, and take the trial through a lengthy appeals process. it wasn't until September 6 2005 that the appeals court finally upheld the original sentence.

To be successful against spammers more examples need to be made of those who are caught. 9 years in jail is a significant start, but asset seizure and other methods need to be established. At least in those countries who have decided not to tolerate spam, the punishment for those convicted needs to be severe. Even if a spammer loses 9 years of their life behind bars (and let's face it, good behaviour and all he'll be out in 2) the feeling of vindication for spam victims is somewhat reduced if they leave jail to return to their multi-million dollar spam-gained fortunes. This will be a start in defeating spam, but the majority of spam messages originate from servers outside the US - China, Ukraine and Russia being the biggest offenders. Thus to make significant headway against the spam problem not only should countries such as the USA be strong in their stand against spammers, but they need to encourage the known problem countries to take the same stance.


Related Tags: spam, spam blockers, spam filter, stop spam, how to stop spam, anti spam software, stop email spam

Until unilateral state action is taken against spammers, it's up to YOU to defend your inbox. Visit STOPSPAMNOW.info to download a free ebook telling you how!

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