A 23 year-old phishing site operator from Iowa has been sentenced to 21 months in jail and will have to pay $57,294 in restitution.

Jayson Harris had pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and fraud. Following his release, he will be subject to supervision for three years.

Harris operated a bogus MSN billing website between January 2003 and June 2004, guiding visitors to the site through spam email messages.

The emails asked MSN customers to visit the website and update their account information and credit card numbers in exchange for a 50 per cent discount for the next month's MSN service.

Microsoft tracked down the phisher and forwarded the information to the FBI for further investigation, leading to his conviction.

"We hope this sentencing will help to keep our customers safe online and serve to have a deterrent effect on phishers and would-be phishers who consider profiting in this way," Aaron Kornblum, an internet safety enforcement attorney for Microsoft, wrote on a Microsoft MSN blog. 

Microsoft is known for hunting down online criminals, but its actions have mostly resulted in the arrest and conviction of botnet operators. The Harris case is the first time that the company has assisted in the conviction of a phisher.