Porn Spam Bandits Get Five Years

Authored by Scott Goldberg on October 15, 2007 - 8:26am.

Contents of this Can May Contain Pornographic Images

Porn and spam, synonymous with email since its inception, have fallen under the spotlight for different reasons as two violators of US anti-spam law have received a five-year sentence. Jeffrey Kilbride and James Schaffer were convicted of conspiracy, money-laundering, fraud, and transportation of obscene materials, the East Valley Tribune reports.

The spam scan was simple: Kilbride and Schaffer bought email lists and mass-mailed links to porn sites, earning $2 million in the process. Part of the difficulty in catching the men stemmed from the fact their Phoenix-based business used a server based in Amsterdam, with a fake corporation and bank account in East African island nation Mauritius, and a bank account in the Isle of Man.

In addition to the jail time, Kilbride and Schaeffer were fined $100,000 each and were forced to return $1.1 million of their profits. They are also required to pay AOL $77,500 in restitution because of the 1.5 million customers who complained about the spamming.

Bonnie & Clyde, Butch Cassidy & Sundance, Kilbride and Schaeffer? Intriguing. Someone in Hollywood is writing a script as we speak.