Email-Stealing AOL Employee Finally Sentenced
from the lock-him-up dept
Last December, we reported how a judge refused to accept a plea bargain from an ex-AOL employee that had stolen 92 million screen names and email addresses and sold them to spammers, because he wasn't sure a crime had been committed. The plea was finally accepted and this week, the employee was sentenced to spend a year and three months in jail and pay $84,000 in restitution. The list that was sold included info on all of the company's 30 million users, and is reportedly still in circulation today. The irony here is that the judge said he cancelled his AOL account because he got too much spam -- but apparently prosecutors' original wording of the crime as a violation of the CAN SPAM act wasn't clear enough.
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What a pathetically light sentence. His fine should be 200% of the revenue he received. If he has to sell his home to pay it, then so be it.
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I agree, we need to make it UNPROFITABLE for spammers. That is the only incentive for them to quit.
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Actually, the restitution he has to pay is equal to three times what he received for the addresses -- which makes him seem doubly stupid.
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