The Court of Appeals of Virginia has upheld the first conviction under a state law that makes spamming a felony.
Jeremy Jaynes of North Carolina was convicted in Loudoun County, VA two years ago of illegally spamming America Online customers. He flooded the servers at AOL’s headquarters with bulk e-mail pitching computer programs and stock pickers, prosecutors said.
Though Jaynes is a North Carolina resident, Virginia law allows out-of-state spammers to be charged if the e-mail goes through servers in the state where AOL is headquartered.
Jaynes was charged with three counts of using deceptive routing information in his headers. He was sentenced to nine years in prison and allowed to remain free on a $1 million bond while he appealed.
His lawyers say he’ll appeal the decision.
Virginia Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell said he will ask the court to revoke bond and order Jaynes to begin serving his sentence.
Before he was arrested, anti-spam group Spamhaus.org considered Jaynes one of the top spammers in the world. According to Spamhaus, Jaynes was part of a “nonstop group of porn spammers with T1 access … notorious for horsey porn.”
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