Adam Vitale, 27, a New Yorker has been sentenced to 30 months in prison after he was found guilty of sending spam email messages to AOL subscribers.
He sent 250,000 spam messages to more than 1.2 million AOL e-mail addresses and this is not the first time he has done that.
He had 22 previous convictions and was previously investigated for running a prostitution ring via Craigslist, apologized and said he had learnt his lesson.
Court also ordered him to pay $180,000 fine to AOL.
According to U.S. District Judge Denny Chin:
Spamming is serious criminal conduct; this is not a teenager engaging in child’s play.
He was successful in sending so much spam because he employed the technique of changing email headers and using multiple computers which would then bypass AOL’s spam filters.
He had an accomplice named Todd Moeller, 27, who was sentenced to 27 months in jail in November 2007.
On the quesion of how they were caught the officials responded that they were caught after law enforcement officials hired them to spam out messages promoting a new security product. Both agreed to do the job, in exchange for half of the profits from sales. At the end this sting operation proved to be successful.
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