A North Carolina man was sentenced to nine years in prison for sending hundreds of thousands of "spam" e-mail messages, Virginia prosecutors said on Wednesday. Jeremy Jaynes, of Raleigh, North Carolina was found guilty under a state law that sets limits on the number of e-mails marketers can send in a given time period and prohibits them from using fake e-mail addresses, state Virginia State Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said.
Jaynes' sister, Jessica DeGroot, was also found guilty and fined $7,500, Kilgore said. An associate, Richard Rutkowski, was found not guilty. Jaynes, who used the alias Gaven Stubberfield, was ranked by the watchdog group Spamhaus as the eighth-most prolific spammer in the world when he was arrested last December. The messages sent out by Jaynes advertised penny stocks, low mortgage rates and software to erase Internet browsing records, Virginia officials said.
News source: Reuters
