Porn Spammers Get Jail Time

Jeffrey A Kilbride of Venice, California, and James R. Schaffer of Paradise Valley, Arizona, were charged with money laundering, conspiracy, fraud, and the transportation of obscene materials after a three week trial in Phoenix.

The two men had reportedly purchased email address lists and sent owners links to pornographic websites. According to the US Justice Department, they had made more than $2m working for porn websites over the last four years.

Over 9 months in 2004 alone, according to court documents, the men sent more than 600,000 spam messages to private emails. The men were paid commission based on the number of people who followed their spam links onto the websites.

The men dodged authorities for years, making it appear they were sending emails from abroad by logging onto a server in Amsterdam, but were recently traced back to their actual location in Phoenix.

In addition to jail time the men were ordered to forfeit $1.3m of their earnings. Each was slapped with a separate $100,000 fine and also a $77,500 restitution fine to AOL whose users were targeted.

The ruling marks a first of its kind prosecution in the US under new federal anti-spam laws. The CAN-SPAM act of 2003 – Controlling The Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography or Marketing – established the first national standards on sending commercial email.