Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas Horne said that because the law targeting bulk e-mail distribution is new and raises constitutional questions, it was appropriate to defer the prison time until appeals courts rule.

A jury had recommended the nine-year prison term after convicting Jeremy Jaynes of pumping out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of Internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need.

Mr. Jaynes, of Raleigh, N.C., told the judge that regardless of how the appeal turns out, "I can guarantee the court I will not be involved in the e-mail marketing business again."

Mr. Jaynes declined to talk to reporters. He remains under $1-million (U.S.) bond.

Prosecutors have described Mr. Jaynes as among the top 10 spammers in the world at the time of his arrest, using the name "Gaven Stubberfield" and other aliases to peddle junk products and pornography. Prosecutors say he grossed up to $750,000 a month.

The jury also convicted Mr. Jaynes's sister, Jessica DeGroot of Raleigh, but recommended only a $7,500 fine. Her conviction was later dismissed by the judge. A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski of Cary, N.C., was acquitted of all charges

From: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050409/RTICKSPAM09/TPInternational/Americas

===SNIP================
More...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200504/s1341692.htm
""It was not just sending bulk emails, he was falsifying the routing information, disguising the origin," Ms Hicks-Thomas said.

"The end-user couldn't say 'don't sent this to me'."

Jaynes, who operated using the alias "Gaven Stubberfield," was listed by the anti-spam watchdog group Spamhaus as the eighth most prolific spammer in the world.

Ms Hicks-Thomas said prosecutors calculated that Jaynes took in between $US500,000 and $US750,000 ($647,300 and $970,950) a month through the sale of products through the emails.

She said Jaynes also possessed a stolen database of America Online members with some 84 million email addresses. "
=========SNIP===========
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38788-2005Apr8.html
"Jeremy Jaynes, 30, of the Raleigh area of North Carolina, was convicted in November of violating Virginia's anti-spam statute by illegally flooding America Online accounts with tens of thousands of bulk e-mail advertisements. The case was tried in Loudoun because the e-mails, which peddled such products as stock pickers and a computer program, ran through an AOL server in the county."

and further down in the article there...
"During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Jaynes as the head of a lucrative spam business that he operated from his home with help from his sister and codefendant, Jessica DeGroot, and a third defendant, Richard Rutkowski. They said the defendants used phony Internet addresses to send more than 10,000 spam e-mails to America Online subscribers on three days in July 2003 -- a volume that makes the crime a felony."

I do hope he gets an prison style education on the sexual terms and pornography his spam was generating.

Seems only fitting.

Hell yea!! Get rid of the internet scum!! Now if they can find those bastards who make browser highjackers and spyware. The scum that rights those programs should be shot right where they stand, as death is the only proper penalty for their crime against everyones privacy.

It's a shame the judge couldn't total up all the time wasted he caused his victims and sentenced him that way. He would never have seen daylight again in his life.

I'd be a spammer too if I could make that much money doing it.

Spamming is even more profitable than drug dealing, when you look at it, and harder to get caught doing with a lesser risk at losing your life.

However, drug dealing is a more prestegious job. You have to maintain your reputation that you sell a quality product if you want business, and unlike with spam, people want what the drug dealer is selling.

". . . Unlike with spam, people want what the drug dealer is selling."

But there must be enough suckers placing orders with the ads connected with spam to still make it worthwhile for the spammers, however low the ratio may be. And it's those kind of people who perpetuate the system . . . indirectly making the rest of us email users lose time every day having to deal with those pieces of junk email.

Let's not forget how much we hate snail mail spam too.

Half of the internet's bandwidth is sucked up due to spam, and half of our landfills are probably filled with pizza hut coupons. Not that I care about landfills, but I hate junk mail in all of it's forms.

..like having commercials delivered to your house every day. Enough already.

This is something interesting to try:

Next time you're filling out a form for something (maybe registering for something online, maybe something else), use your real name and info as you usually would but replace your middle initial with something else.. a "J" or a "P" or whatever makes you feel good. Over the coming weeks/months see how much junk you get addressed to [your name with the wrong middle initial]. It's an interesting experiment.

I've actually done that; it's really intriguing, isn't it.

The most junk snail mail that came my way was after I filled in a registering-for-a-big-prize form during a special promotion.
I learned my lesson.