Porn Spammer Faces Five Years Behind Bars
William Eazel writes on SC Magazine Online:
A U.S. individual faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of aiding and abetting the sending of spam containing graphic pornographic images.
Kirk Rogers, 42, of Manhattan Beach, Cal., was charged following complaints that hundreds of thousands of spam messages had been sent promoting adult pornographic websites. He pleaded guilty at a federal court in Phoenix, to one count under the CAN-SPAM Act, and agreed to forfeit money obtained in the commission of the crimes. Rogers faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for the offense and is scheduled to be sentenced on June 5.
According to the plea agreement entered at the court, Rogers developed and then managed the computer system used to transmit the spam emails on behalf of Jeffrey A. Kilbride, of Venice, California, and James R. Schaffer, of Paradise Valley, Ariz. According to an earlier indictment, Kilbride and Schaffer conspired to send the spam emails.
U.S. Porn Spammers Convicted
Via Virus Bulletin Spam News.
A federal jury in Phoenix, Arizona, has found two men guilty of two charges of violating the US CAN-SPAM regulations, as well as other charges including fraud and money laundering.
The two men, Californian Jeffrey Kilbride and Arizona citizen James Shaffer, both 41, are thought to have started their spamming business, promoting porn sites, in 2003 and made as much as $2 million from the operation. When the CAN-SPAM laws came into effect in 2004, they started using servers based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in an attempt to bypass the regulations, and also used companies set up in Mauritius and the Isle of Man to hide their financial traces.
Use of domain names registered with fraudulent information and spoofing email headers meant the men fell foul of the CAN-SPAM acts requirements for openness and traceability. After a three week trial the two have been found guilty on all counts, and at their sentencing in September could face up to five years jail time for each CAN-SPAM count and another 20 years for the money laundering charges.
More
here.
Two Are Sentenced to 5 Years in Pornographic Spam Case
An AP newswire article, via The New York Times, reports that:
Two men who sent millions of unsolicited pornographic e-mail messages have been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison as part of a prosecution under a federal antispam law, officials from the Department of Justice said Friday.
The men, Jeffrey A. Kilbride of Venice, Calif., and James R. Schaffer of Paradise Valley, Ariz., bought lists of e-mail addresses and sent the owners of those addresses links to pornographic Web sites, prosecutors said.
They were convicted in June of charges including conspiracy, money laundering, fraud and transportation of obscene materials after a three-week trial and were sentenced by a federal judge in Phoenix this week.
More
here.
Note: This case goes all the way to 2005.
- ferg
Interesting: WHOIS Privacy Considered 'Material Falsification'
Ryan Sadler writes on Sedo Domain News:
A recent decision by the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has determined that using WHOIS privacy on domains may be considered “material falsification” under federal law. The defendants in US v. Kilbride (9th Cir., 2009) were convicted under the CAN-SPAM Act in a case that involved criminal charges of intentional email spamming.
Enacted by the US Congress in 2003, the CAN-SPAM Act prohibits false or misleading transmission information, deceptive headers, and requires email solicitations to give an easy opt-out method and be labeled as an advertisement, including the senders physical post address. Commercial emails that use false or misleading headers, or violate other CAN-SPAM provisions, such as falsified registration information, are subject to fines of up to $11,000 for each unsolicited email sent.
The court then made it clear in their ruling that the defendants’ use of private WHOIS information in this case materially falsified the registration information. The court declared that “It should have been clear to the defendants that intentionally falsifying the identity of the contact person and phone number [through WHOIS privacy] for the actual registrant information constitutes intentionally decreasing the ability of a recipient to locate and contact the actual registrant, regardless of whether a recipient may still be left some avenue to do so. We therefore conclude defendants had notice that their conduct violated the CAN-SPAM act.”
More
here.
Porn-Spam Mom's Plea: 'Not a Mom'
Brian McWilliams writes over on the Spam Kings blog:
Turns out the porn-spam mom isn't a mom after all. MommyJobs.com operator Jennfier Clason has posted a detailed entry at her site about her stint in the porn-spam business. One of her "come clean" revelations: she doesn't actually have any children.
The web posting essentially confirms the key details of Clason's recent plea agreement(PDF file). E.g., she managed porn websites from 1999 -2003 for James R. Schaffer, who operated a company called Diamond International. Schaffer also partnered with Jeffrey Kilbride.
In January of 2004, Clason learned how to use a spam program capable of sending spam from a remote server in Amsterdam. Starting in April 2004, she sent millions of spams that included embedded pornographic images and used falsified "from" lines. AOL received over 600,000 complaints about the spams from January-June, 2004. Clason was paid around $30,000 for her work.
More
here.
Feds Continue Spam Porno Crackdown
Roy Mark writes on internetnews.com:
A New Hampshire woman is facing up to 15 years in prison for violating the CAN SPAM Act after taking a Monday guilty plea to sending bulk pornographic spam e-mails.
According to the Department of Justice (DoJ), Jennifer R. Clason, 33, created and transmitted the spam on behalf of Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 39, of Venice, Calif., and James R. Schaffer, 39, of Paradise Valley, Ariz., who are also facing federal charges.
The DoJ said the smut spam operation generated more than 600,000 complaints from America Online users between January and June of 2004.
More
here.
Three indicted in U.S. spam crackdown
Martyn Williams writes in NetworkWorld:
Three people accused of sending massive amounts of spam face possible prison sentences after being indicted by a grand jury in the U.S. state of Arizona and accused of violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and other charges, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
Named in the indictment are Jennifer R. Clason, Jeffrey A. Kilbride, and James R. Schaffer. The three are accused of sending spam that advertised pornographic Web sites, the Justice Department said in a statement. They could make money from commissions that the Web sites paid in return for directing traffic to their sites, the statement said.
The defendant's operation was ranked as one of the 200 largest sources of spam on the Internet by The Spamhaus Project, a group that tracks and battles against spam. AOL received more than 600,000 complaints between late January and early June last year related to spam from the operation, the Justice Department said. The actual number of users who received spam from the operation could be in the tens of millions, it said.
