NY spammer hit with 30-month prison sentence

A federal court on Tuesday sentenced a New York man to a 30-month prison term for sending unsolicited marketing e-mail to 1.2 million AOL subscribers, according to a Reuters report.

The court ordered Adam Vitale, 27, to also pay restitution of $180,000 to the Time Warner unit for violating federal antispam laws.

In 2005, Brooklyn resident Vitale and another man, Todd Moeller of New Jersey, cut a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails that advertised a security computer program to nearly 1.3 million AOL subscriber addresses. Under that deal, the two men were to receive 50 percent of the product's proceeds.

The two men avoided detection of AOL's spam filter system through the use of several servers to relay and change the e-mail header information.

Moeller was sentenced to 27 months in jail last November.

[mpitogo]

"In 2005, Brooklyn resident Vitale and another man, Todd Moeller of New Jersey, cut a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails"

Isn't that illegal, its called entrapment?

[Kev Orng]

Can I get his email address?

[ballssalty]

He became an informant. In other words he ratted out Vitale and Moeller to the feds after they did the spamming.

[humanssssss]

People are stewpid. Every time there's a problem, they always run to the government to create new laws. People want to receive email yet they don't want to receive email. When a person goes on the Internet that shouldn't have the right to prosecute others for sending them email because it is not the right the person to dictate what the other send. It's the individual right whether to receive them.

If you don't like the email, you delete them. If don't like receiving email, block all email. If you like only receive email that you like, umm... isn't that what you NEED to decide for yourself? If that's the case, go get a program that would block all email except the ones you like. Or are you the type of people who hope someone you don't know will send you an email saying "you've won $4M". If you are those kind of people, you deserve to be spammed because that's exactly what you are asking for, you like to live in a wishful thinking world.

People should let the free market be. It will sort itself out. When people are so fustrated with spam, a program will be created to make spammers pay before the email gets into your inbox. Otherwise it will be trashed. Because you believe your time is valuable. The quality of spam will be a lot higher if people start charging to receive email. I'm doing it with my email, I let everyone know my email address.

People are stewpid.

[sanenazok]

How interesting.

How about spammers compensating the companies on which they free ride? Spammers flood ISP and other e-mail servers to deliver their ads for NOTHIN' That's why there's a law out there since the market doesn't work when one side of the equation can use resources for free.

People like e-mail, just not spam.

How exactly do you charge people to receive their e-mail? You're just using gmail...Whatever.

[humanssssss]

@Gromit801

"Theft of resources ..." what you are paying more for the spammer's emails? If that's the case, you are fool. You tell your ISP if you pay more, you going to switch to another ISP who has paid email in place. The market will work itself out. Government only hinders the ability of the magic of the market.

and @UITD

Have you ever call a 1-900 number? Probably not because it costs you. The same is true if you call my number because before my phone rings, you will have to agree to a $0.50/min charge. If you don't, you hang up. Do you think telemarketer will call you anymore? Only the one who thinks your phone is worth it will pay you $0.50/min.

As for knocking on your door, you can put an entry fee to the door before the person knocks. Make it clear to the person entering that a $5.00 fee is required for you to knock on your private property. Do you think people will come and knock on your door? In fact, no one will ever come to your place except of course you're a club or something.

You people are pathetic.

[Seaspray0]

Humansssss, We, the public, do pay more for our internet services because of spam. How? Roughly 80% of all email is spam. We, the public, have to pay for all the equipment needed to route, store, and deliver the spam to our inboxes (the ISP must charge higher service fees to the public to purchase and maintain it). And since we are paying for the routing, storing and delivery of email, we, the public, DO have a say in how it gets used. We have the right to apply rules. One of those rules is called the CAN-SPAM act and these guys violated it. We, the public, are the market and we worked it out so that these guys go to jail.

We're not so pathetic after all.

[Dark0ne]

@ humanssssss

1) Tell you what troll, go ahead and post your email addresses and phone numberes here, and lets see how long it is before someone finds a way to inundate your with crap.
2) I didn't see your email address in either of your post , so you must be talking out of your @$$ about giving your email address to everybody. Ditto for your phone number.

[fokkwp]

If a government informant had sold a terrorist a grenade launcher in a sting operation, that terrorist would never have been allowed to use the grenade launcher. That's the point - shooting people with grenade launchers is a bad idea (unless you don't like them) so the sting is set up to prevent it. But in this case, the informant not only sold the list, but let the guy do the spamming, it seems. How can you claim spamming is worth 30 months in jail, when the government deliberately set up and allowed the spamming to happen?

[thelemurking]

I can only hope that someone spams him in the shower with some anal rape.