Posted on: Friday, December 12, 2003
Suspected spam kingpin nabbed
By Paul Davidson
USA Today
One of the world's most notorious spam kingpins was arrested and charged with sending fraudulent bulk e-mail, Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said yesterday.
The arrest, along with one of the first such felony charges in the nation, came amid a nationwide backlash against the billions of e-mail messages clogging inboxes. Congress this month passed the first national bill restricting junk e-mail. Slated to take effect Jan. 1, the law bars spammers from masking return addresses, among other things.
Jeremy Jaynes, 29, of Raleigh, N.C., was arrested by local police at his home and is expected to be extradited to Virginia to face charges that he disguised his identity while sending thousands of e-mails last summer.
Jaynes, who also allegedly uses the aliases Jeremy James and Gaven Stubberfield, is rated by Spamhaus as the world's eighth-most-prolific spammer.
He and his alleged accomplice, Richard Rutowski, still at large, were indicted Monday by a grand jury in Loudoun County, Va.
They were charged with sending e-mails peddling low-interest mortgages, penny stocks and Internet-browsing software using false return addresses and routing information. That prevents recipients from contacting them and violates Virginia law.
"This was a very profitable business for these two individuals," said Kilgore.
Although investigators declined to say how much income they believe the spam scheme generated, they did say both men were supporting affluent lifestyles.
Virginia authorities could pursue the pair because scores of Internet service providers, including No. 1 America Online, house e-mail servers in the state. More than half of all Internet traffic flows through Virginia.
While officials say the indictments might not noticeably shave the barrage of e-mails inundating consumers nationwide, they believe it will deter other spammers.
"This is a huge message that we have a serious law in Virginia, and we will use it to prosecute spammers," Kilgore said at a news conference at AOL headquarters.
Virginia's anti-spam law, considered one of the toughest in the nation, prohibits falsifying information that would allow bulk e-mailers to be identified. The fraud becomes a felony if the volume of spam exceeds 10,000 in 24 hours, 100,000 in 30 days or 1 million in a year.
The suspects, who Virginia officials said surpassed those thresholds in July and August, are each charged with four counts of sending forged bulk e-mail. Each faces up to 20 years in jail and fines of up to $10,000.
The federal law, which sets out its own felony charges for falsifying e-mail, has been criticized for pre-empting tougher state laws. But it includes a carve-out that would let states, such as Virginia, also pursue criminal charges against spammers.
In May, New York charged an infamous Buffalo spammer with forging his e-mail identity. But the Virginia charges are the first under a specific anti-spam statute.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
