Newsletters
Business Advice
Departments
Fresh Inc.
November 14, 2004
The Price, and Profit, of Being a Spammer
Posted by Carole Matthews at 7:50 PM
Inc. reporter Darren Dahl reported on Friday that Virginia recently led the way in the nation's first prosecution of a spammer, a North Carolina man named Jeremy Jaynes. Bail for Jaynes was set at $1 million dollars. Why? Apparently, Jaynes' spamming business was quite lucrative. Prosecutors suspect he's been "squirreling away" parts of his $24 million fortune in foreign bank accounts, and is too great a flight risk, according to a November 9 AP story. Though Jaynes' faces up to nine years in prison, I wonder if this type of prison time will deter others. The lure of making millions by peddling junk products, pornography, and other dubious materials is probably worth the risk to many unscrupulous characters. What type of discipline should spammers face? Is nine years behind bars excessive, not enough?
Try a RISK-FREE Issue of Inc. Today!
Select Services
- Home |
- Contact Us |
- About Us |
- Subscribe |
- Advertise Online |
- Legal Disclaimers |
- Media Kits |
- Press |
- Privacy Statement
Copyright © 2009 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved. Inc.com, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195
Mansueto Digital Network: Inc.com | FastCompany.com | IncBizNet.com | IncTechnology.com | FastCompany.tv
24 million dollars! That's unbelievable. I'm glad they busted someone, but I'd like to see them do the same thing for all the spam I receive in my postal mailbox. I'm tired of catalogs, coupons, and credit card offers. I personally don't see the difference between postal spam and email spam.
The difference is these spammers use other companies networks to send their messages at a cost not to them but the network owners this can run into thousands of $$$ it's plain and simple stealing. When you get junk mail at least the sender has paid for it to be delivered.
It seems to be a lucrative (and annoying) business. My question is who actually buys product from these guys? They should be locked up as well, as they feed the pockets which results in more penis enlargement email!(Which doesn't work......I mean so I have been told;)
9 years for $24 Million..works out to $2.6 Million/year dosen't seem like a deterent to me.
MangoMoose
I am just wondering what is the busines smodel that makes someone 24 million dollars! rich based on spam? Not that i am planning on getting into the business... But when i get those mails i always wonder...where is the money?
This appears to be a case in point of PT Barnum's famous quote (which is often only partially quoted): "There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him."
But 24 million? It's hard to believe... and certainly is a horrendous example of fraud. Punishable, I say, to the full extent of the law. It's a deliberate criminal act. If he did the crime, let him do the time.
To answer the question posed by the article, yes, jail time is excessive. At least, when considered in terms of the cost to the state, and compared to the cost of a single bullet.
I can imagine the amount of jobs that this guy created for people working to combat spam is a far greater cost than the amount of money he was making. We need to outline more clearly defined laws for email soliciting. I've been shut down because of spammers using my mail servers as a gateway for sending spam. Just a real world example of how much of a pain it can be.
I work as a network administrator in a small IT department and I can't tell you how pleased I am to hear this. I spend so much of my day dealing with spam filters it's not even funny.
The problem here is that there doesn't appear to be fraud. That is not what he is being prosecuted for. He is be prosecuted for using email. Specifically UCE. He has a right to use email just like this is email.
Everyone hates unwanted email, junk mail, TV Advertising, Radio Advertising, etc. However, we are Capitalists in a consumer nation.
He also has a right to advertise. If he pays for Internet Service like I do then he has a right to use it. Just like I pay for the street the mailman drives on to bring me junk mail or the cable to bring me all those unwanted advertisments.
By the way I pay for your junk advertising too. We all do in the form of taxes on our telephone bills.
We have set the guidelines (Canned Spam Act) and if a person follows that then so be it. This act applies only to this small country and of course the Internet is International.
Think about it. We are indeed a careless Nation. Is losing the FREEDOM of the Internet and FreE Speach worth it.
Remember Martha Stewart is in Jail and Osama bin Laden is free.
You know if Martha were free she'd spam you and everyone you care about.
man, GET A LIFE YOU RANDOM POSTALOTS!!!!
Why is spam so damn annoying that it would insite people to want to shoot this guy? I wrote an article entitled: Thoughts on Internet Marketing which answers this. Rod touched on it above. It's that the "contract" that advertisers make with the viewer/recipient is violated by spammers. The recipient needs to get SOMETHING for their time - even useful information about a product is often satisfactory but spammers only offer SCAMS and pay nothing to play that game on us.
Anyone who owns and runs an ISP like my family does, knows that spam causes us time and money everyday and it is NOT A RIGHT that an American has to carry out. Please do not comment on something unless you understand the ramifications of SPAM. I'd also like to know why all these people buy and support the spammers. I delete them all or quarantine them to never even be seen!
Post Your Own Comments