Virginia authorities said on Thursday they had arrested and charged a North Carolina man for sending "spam" e-mail in the first use of a new state law that could bring penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said Jeremy Jaynes had been arrested earlier Thursday in Raleigh, N.C., on four counts of using fraudulent means to transmit spam.
Kilgore told a news conference that officials were in negotiations for the surrender of a second man, Richard Rutowski, on the same charges.
Jaynes and Rutowski are charged with violating limits on the number of messages a marketer can send and falsifying routing information. Both are illegal under the Virginia law that carries penalties of 1-5 years in prison and fines of up to $2,500 on each count.
Roughly 50 percent of the world"s Internet traffic passes through Virginia, home to big Internet companies like Time Warner Inc."s American Online unit and MCI.