Spammer goes to jail. One down, thousands to go! |
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Internet Credit Card Fraud Spammer Sent to Prison
"An Internet scammer who used e-mail and a fraudulent Web site to steal hundreds of credit card numbers was sentenced to almost four years in jail Tuesday (May 13th 2004), one of the stiffest-ever penalties handed down for online fraud.
Houston, Texas federal court Judge Vanessa Gilmore sentenced Houston resident Zachary Hill to 46 months in jail for his role in duping consumers into turning over 473 credit card numbers."
Complete Article
While I applaud the court's ruling back in 2004, has it been effective? I would say no. Today we see more spam than ever before, including phishing attempts such as the one Mr. Hill used.
These days the emails tend to pretend to be major banks who require your identity to be confirmed. Of course all they do is steal your identity instead.
Personally, I feel that sentence needs to be stronger. Say double. Then apply it.
The only way these people will stop is if we make it financially unviable for them to continue. A slap on the wrist does nothing to prevent the next breed from spawning.
"An American spammer has been sentenced to nine years in prison for sending millions of unsolicited emails, after a ground-breaking court case which exposed the high income that can be made from the trade.
Jeremy Jaynes, 30, became the first spammer to be prosecuted for a serious crime under new legislation.
The multimillionaire "modern-day snake-oil salesman", as the prosecution dubbed him, was considered the eighth most prolific spammer in the world, sending up to 10 million emails a day from his house in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Jaynes banked up to $US750,000 ($A970,000) a month from his emails, which advertised pornography, fake products and services, and promoted work-at-home schemes, prosecutors said."
Complete Article
9 Years is getting closer to what we need to see. Assuming he doesn't find a way to play a "get out of jail free" card. Remember, our current justice system is one where if you have the money, you can literally get away with murder.
As you can read, the man was making 3 quarters of a million dollars PER MONTH sending out his massive spam attacks. So, you have to ask yourself, what would it take for people to not be willing to make that kind of money? Something pretty hardcore I would imagine. At the very least, the 9 years of jail time, PLUS all assets permanently seized and donuted to the spamalert.org antispammer fund (well, one can hope right?)
Basically, we can expect this problem to grow and grow each year until we find a way to either stop spam dead (so far it's proven quite difficult to do) or until the threat of being caught outways the potentially huge profits these criminals have grown accustomed to.
"An Australian company and its director have been fined a total of $AU5.5m (£2.2m) after they were found to have sent more than 200 million spam emails in a 12 month period.
The Perth-based spammer, Wayne Mansfield, and his company Clarity1, were found to have illegally sent out millions of spam messages in the 12 months since Australian spam laws were introduced in April 2004.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said: 'This is the first time that spammers have been successfully prosecuted under the Australian Spam Act, and represents a victory for the authorities and the man in the street pestered by nuisance email.'"
Complete Article
Now THIS might hurt them where it counts. In the pocket books. Personally I'd stick the 9 years in prison sentence on the end of that and call it a major victory.
Hopefully this is the beginning of a turn around in the struggle against the spam industry.
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