Gene`s BMX News

[Seth]

*** Spammer Sentenced Nearly Four Years ***

Seattle, Washington -- 07/22/2008
The "spam king" was sentenced on Tuesday to 47 months in prison, with
a ruling that the court hopes sends a message to other online criminals.

Robert Soloway, the man known as the spam king for the massive
volume of spam he sent out, pleaded guilty to fraud, spamming and
tax evasion after being indicted in May 2007. After an unusually long
sentencing hearing lasting two-and-a-half days, Judge Marsha Pechman
handed down her sentence in the U.S. District Court for the Western
District of Washington in Seattle.

The case has been closely watched because only a few such spam cases
have ever been tried. A man named Jeremy Jaynes was sentenced in
Virginia earlier this year to nine years in prison for his spam crimes, and
Adam Vitale got slightly more than two years for a recent conviction in
New York.

The prosecution argued that Soloway should get more prison time than
any of the previous spammers, asking for a sentence of seven to nine
years. "None of those cases, not one, comes close to this case in terms
of the duration of the maliciousness, the harassment techniques, the high
level of spamming activity that we have in this case," said assistant U.S.
attorney Kathryn Warma.

However, compared with some other notorious spammers, Soloway
deserved some leniency, his attorneys said. Soloway didn't damage
anyone's computer, he didn't send out malicious code, and he never
directed people to pornography, as some spammers have done, his
lawyer Richard Troberman said. Jaynes, for example, had millions of
AOL e-mail addresses that were stolen from the ISP (Internet service
provider), and he was earning as much as US$700,000 a month from
his activities, Troberman said. By comparison, the government figured
conservatively that Soloway earned more than $700,000 in three years.

But the Soloway case was an opportunity for the courts to dissuade
online criminals from continuing their work, Warma said. "A disturbing
theme we repeatedly saw from the complainant is, why isn't the law
being enforced on the Net? Why isn't CAN-SPAM being enforced?"
she said. "This individual has refused to stop his criminal conduct,
notwithstanding two separate civil judgments and an injunction by
a U.S. federal court judge. I suggest to you the only effective way
to stop Soloway is a long prison sentence during which he'll be incapable
of continuing this criminal activity." Soloway has previously lost cases
brought against him by Microsoft and by an ISP in Oklahoma, yet
continued to spam.

Pechman said it was difficult to come up with a sentence for Soloway
because there have been so few other spam cases in the courts and
because the legal system doesn't yet have appropriate sentencing
guidelines. "This statute really needs a set of guidelines written and
tailored to the CAN-SPAM act, tailored to the evolving computer science
that allows people to engage in this activity," she said. "The current
guidelines are not really very helpful," especially when CAN-SPAM
violations are combined with other crimes, she said.

Soloway apologized to the judge and to his family, admitting that his
actions were wrong. "There is no one else to blame but myself," he
said, before the judge handed down her sentence.

Soloway has apologized for his activities before. After he was
investigated in 1999 in California for spamming activities, he
told detectives that he was sorry and learned a lot, Warma said.
"He then moved on to another state and immediately engaged
in the same behavior," she said.

It has been more typical for Soloway to boast about his techniques
than to apologize for them. In online forums he would brag that he
would never have to pay the millions of dollars the civil courts
ordered him to pay.

He claims he lived in a modest household growing up but went to school
with kids who were wealthier. He didn't have friends and always figured
that if he earned a lot of money, people would like him, he said. "The
only time people ever talked to me was when I made money or spent it,"
he said. "It was completely wrong. I'm very embarrassed and ashamed."

Microsoft attorney Aaron Kornblum attended the hearing and said he was
pleased with the results. "Soloway repeatedly broke the law. He defied a
federal judge and he made a lot of money. This sends a strong message."

Soloway was one of the first spammers Microsoft sued when, in 2003,
the company decided it was time to try to put a stop to spam using legal
means. At the time, Soloway was known as the third-most-prolific
spammer in the world, Kornblum said.

In addition to the prison term, Soloway will serve three years
of probation and must do 200 hours of community service.

The government has also asked for a separate restitution hearing.

Another notorious spammer, Eddie Davidson, escaped from his prison
camp in Colorado on Sunday, authorities said Tuesday. He had been
serving a 21-month sentence after pleading guilty to spam charges in
December.