Jeremy Jaynes

The sentence under the Virginia law, which was used to model a federal spam law later approved by Congress, was the first prison term in the United States in a spam case.

"It was not just sending bulk e-mails, he was falsifying the routing information, disguising the origin," prosecutor Lisa Hicks-Thomas said.

Jaynes, who operated using the alias "Gaven Stubberfield," was listed by the anti-spam watchdog group Spamhaus as the eighth most prolific spammer in the world.

Hicks-Thomas said prosecutors calculated that Jaynes took up to $750,000 a month through e-mail sales of products.

She said Jaynes also possessed a stolen database of America Online members with some 84 million e-mail addresses.

The Japan Times Weekly: April 16, 2005
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