There have been a few high profile penalties against spammers of late, but they all lack one key ingredient--jail time.
But there are no spammers in the slammer. That may be changing (I hope).
Reuters reports that a Brooklyn man was sentenced to 30 months in prison for sending spam to 1.2 million subscribers of AOL. According to Reuters:
Adam Vitale, 27, was sentenced in federal court in Manhattan after pleading guilty more than a year ago to breaking anti-spam laws. He was also ordered to pay $180,000 to AOL in restitution.
Vitale was caught making a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails -- known as spam -- that advertised a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the product's profits, prosecutors said.
Now let's get real: Vitale was a small-time spammer. After all, the real big guns are out of the U.S. But it's a start. With any luck some of the big spam kings will be taking a perp walk in the not too distant future. I'd much rather hear about a spammer doing jail time than large settlements where the funds will never be collected.