30 months of bread and water for spammer

Filed Under: Law & order, Spam

Behind bars

Get the bunting out - another spammer is being sent to the clink.

27-year-old Adam Vitale was sentenced by a federal court in Manhattan yesterday to 30 months in prison after sending spam to more than 1.2 million AOL users in less than a week.

Vitale and his business partner Todd Moeller (who was himself sent to prison last November for his part in the scheme) boasted via instant messages with a confidential government informant that they could send emails without risk of their origin being tracked back. Earlier in the case, Vitale pleaded guilty under the CAN-SPAM Act to falsifying email headers and using a variety of computer servers in order to evade detection by AOL's spam-filtering system.

According to court records, Vitale wanted a share of the profits made from selling the goods sold via spam.

Vitale was also ordered to pay $180,000 to AOL, which is presumably going to make a dent in his pocket. Do prison uniforms have pockets? I'm not sure.

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About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.