US judge sends spammer to the slammer

A court in Virginia has jailed one of the world's most prolific spammers for nine years.

Jeremy Jaynes, 30, was estimated to be earning $750,000 a month and sending as many as 10 million emails a day at the height of his spamming career.

He was convicted of using false internet addresses and aliases to send mass email ads via an AOL server in Loudoun County, Virginia.

"It was not just sending bulk emails; he was falsifying the routing information and disguising the origin," said prosecutor Lisa Hicks Thomas. "The end user could not say: 'Don't send this to me.'"

Jaynes has been given leave to appeal against the sentence and has been released on $1m bail. He has vowed to give up what he refers to as the "email marketing business".

Products advertised in his emails included a 'Fed-Ex refund processor', which he claimed would allow people to earn $75 an hour working from home, and software that erases web use logs. He used the proceeds to buy two homes and a steak restaurant, and to invest in a chain of gyms.

The appeal has been allowed because the law, introduced in 2003, may be ruled unconstitutional.

The jury also convicted Jaynes's sister, Jessica DeGroot, but conviction was later dismissed by the judge. A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski of Cary, North Carolina, was acquitted of all charges.