Two men who brought down a computer system by sending thousands of
spam e-mails through its servers are facing criminal charges for
their activities. To date, few spammers have been convicted by a
criminal courts.
Michael Persaud and Frank Kriticos of San Diego risk sentences
of up to four years and four months on charges that include three
counts of disrupting computer services to cause injury and
illegally using someone else’s domain name. Their e-mails offered
the refinancing services of a third party company and appeared to
come from Veritools, a software company. Veritools became the
victim because its servers were used by Persaud and Kriticos to
send the spam without its prior knowledge.
In January, two Californian students were sentenced to 27 months
imprisonment for sending fraudulent spam. In December, a spammer
pleaded guilty in New York to second degree forgery
California is rare in having an anti-spamming law. It is only
legal to send spam in the state if the header of the e-mail
identifies the message as an advert and the recipient is given a
real option to unsubscribe. A breach of the law constitutes a
misdemeanour. However, according to news service ZDNet.com, the law
has not been enforced to date.
