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Brooklyn Man Imprisoned For 30 Months for Sending Spam to AOL Users

On July 15, 2008, a man from Brooklyn, Adam Vitale, was sentenced to imprisonment for two and half years for sending spam mails to almost 1.2 Million users of American Online in a plan that deteriorated the spam filtering technology of the Internet Company.

At a hearing conducted on July 15, 2008, Denny Chin, US District Judge in Manhattan, sent Adam to prison for 30 months (two and half years). Further, this would be followed by 3 years supervised release and Adam have to pay compensation of around $183,000 to AOL, as reported by CNNMoney on July 15, 2008.

Adam was caught red-handed when he was making a deal with a government agent to send junk mails that would advertise a computer security software for 50% of the product's profit. In 2007, he was found guilty of conspiracy and two counts of violating anti-spam rules. Also, he was found guilty of various narcotics allegations in New Jersey during August 2007 and since then he was in federal custody.

Besides, Adam had almost 22 earlier charges and had proved a major participant in operating a brothel ring on the site www.craiglist.com , but he was not criminally charged.

Also, in the spam mail case, Adam and another person named Todd Moeller by passed the filter system of AOL by accessing various different servers to relay the mails and modified the details of mail header to make sure that the spam mails could not be traced back to them. Moeller was imprisoned for his participation in the scheme for 27 months in November 2007.

According to the prosecutor, Adam was an officer in an online firm whose systems displayed advertisements of whores over www.craiglsit.com and therefore, aware of the ads of the brothel services. The company was also involved in selling industrial cutting techniques and other products over the net.

Ironically, Adam was not charged of the brothel allegations and the judge claimed that he would not take those prostitution allegations in consideration for punishing Adam.

Interestingly, Denny Chin said to Adam while sentencing him that spamming is a serious offence and it is not a child's game. Also, Adam earlier apologized and confessed that he learnt a lesson, as reported by reuters on July 15, 2008.

Related article: Brazilian President's Party Website Disrupted

» SPAMfighter News - 7/28/2008

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