back to article AOL spammer jailed for 30 months

A New Yorker was jailed for 30 months on Tuesday after being convicted for spamming 1.2 million AOL members with junk mail. Adam Vitale, 27 and of Brooklyn, was also ordered to pay $180,000 to AOL in restitution for bombarding subscribers to the service with emails punting a "computer security" product. Vitale pleaded guilty ( …

COMMENTS

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  1. Brain

    at last!

    I think all spammers should receive harsh sentences like this one. Yay for common sense!

  2. Adam Foxton
    Thumb Up

    Fair enough

    £90k fine- a few pence per user affected and 65 seconds per message seems fine to me, so long as no-one was hurt and nothing "bad" happenned besides someone going "Oh, bloody spam!" or getting beaten up for quoting monty python for the 70th time that day.

    I would also make a point of getting a list of the proxies he used and inform their ISPs that this is happenning.

    But yeah, seems entirely reasonable to me.

  3. Gordon Pryra
    Flame

    22 prior convictions?

    I see the slaps on the hand made no difference in the past then

    Surely once someone has got to 2 or 3 prior convictions its time to say "hes going to do it again" or "hang the fucker"?

  4. Pavlovs well trained dog

    65s per mail

    Brilliant. That should be the bench mark for all spammers from now on.

    Send twelvty gabazillion spam message, spend your life in jail.

  5. Omer Ozen
    Happy

    Wish he hadn't ...

    sold so many pen1s enlargement pumps & v1agra now!

  6. andy gibson

    Prosecute the companies

    Surely the spam is advertising a company, so why not also hit them with massive fines for advertising in this way?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is rediculous

    30 months? I didn't even know there was a law against it!

    How is this any different to the junk mail which I physically get shovelled through my door on a daily basis, for crap I don't need or want, such as kitchens, estate agents and credit card companies?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Revised prison diet

    Please please please nothing for him to eat but spam.

    Every meal.

    Every day.

    For 30 months.

  9. dominic bird

    letters of apology

    They should make him write a hand written letter of apology to each person he spammed.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Mad Dave

    >"30 months? I didn't even know there was a law against it!"

    Then you're not mad, just fantastically ignorant. Google "CAN-SPAM" to find out exactly how little attention you've been paying for the past five years.

  11. John Stag

    New around here...

    "How is this any different to the junk mail which I physically get shovelled through my door on a daily basis, for crap I don't need or want, such as kitchens, estate agents and credit card companies?"

    Difference is: They pay to send that junk.

    With Spam you pay to receive it.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Mad Dave

    Might I suggest starting here;

    http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm

    I could go on but can't be arsed.

    Simon

  13. RW
    Stop

    Now if they'd just go after the telemarketers.

    The US has a do-not-call database. Canada has a clumsy imitation of its own. The US version will not accept Canadian telephone numbers and vice versa.

    So the Montreal boiler room operators target the gullible in the US and vice versa.

    The key element in this is that many (most? all?) telemarketing calls are scams of one sort or another, some obviously and overtly criminal, others more subtly so. I regularly receive calls from an outfit apparently based in Tacoma, Washington. This outfit is well-known on the web to be engaged in "vishing" (voice phishing) for CC details they can sell, yet the authorities do not act.

    Time to flatly outlaw not only e-spam but t-spam.

    Stop it now!

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Still not enough

    Give them five or ten minutes per email. A decade or so in the slammer should get the message across.

  15. StopthePropaganda
    Thumb Up

    a minute a message-perfect.

    sounds like a fair international standard. Course that puts certain Russian mafiosa and Chinese government trolls in jail for multiple lifetimes. Oh well. Consequences suck, don't they?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    punishment given is not enough

    30 months in jail is excessive?

    no bloody friggin way add hard labor in very nasty places to boot and daily cane whippings!And maybe just maybe i just maybe would consider it as a justifiable punishment...

    same should apply to telemarketers....

    BTW one of the problems these parasites exist in first place is because of companies that hire them in first place. so why not go after the people and individuals( particulary individuals since they are the ones making the decision to use these people in first place) and make them serve the sentences side by side?

    in for the penny in for the pound as the saying goes...

  17. Whitefort

    Harsh??????

    Not long enough.

    Not NEARLY long enough. I think about a month per spam would give them something to think about. These bastards are wrecking the internet.

    Even better - a year per spam!!

    ( I have the words 'death penalty' running about in my head, but that might be a *bit* too harsh... maybe...)

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