Spamming Case Bogs Down On Legalities

Published: Friday, December 24, 2004 Online-Casinos.com

SPAMMING CASE BOGS DOWN ON LEGALITIES

First it's a plea bargain, but then the Judge wants more information

There were a series of rapid and interesting developments this week in the high profile Smathers case - an AOL engineer who stands accused of misappropriating a massive list of AOL members' email addresses and selling them to spammers.

First came the news that Smathers was negotiating a bargain plea to ameliorate the possible penalties for his activities in stealing and selling an AOL email list...reports suggested that he and the prosecution had struck a deal that would put him in jail for a couple of years.

A day later, came the startling news that a guilty plea had been agreed....but the judge refused to accept it, saying he was unsure a crime had been committed and asking for more information due to the new nature of the anti-spamming laws.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein stopped the hearing at which Jason Smathers was to plead guilty to conspiracy and interstate trafficking of stolen property, saying he had a "technical question" about the alleged crime.

At issue, the judge said, is whether the actions rose to the level required by a new antispam law, which states that spam must be not only annoying but deceptive.

"Everybody has spamsters, but mine is a technical question," the judge said. "I don't think it's deceptive or misleading to the recipient."

The judge, who said he once used AOL but quit the provider because of the amount of spam he received, asked prosecutors to submit a legal brief by January 12 with more information.

The judge also set a hearing for January 28 at which time he could decide to accept the plea.

"I need to be independently satisfied that a crime has been committed," he said. The case is among the earliest criminal prosecutions under the new anti-spam law, which went into effect in January.

The case by federal prosecutors charges that Smathers, of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, stole a list of 92 million customer screen names from AOL, a Time Warner Inc. unit, and sold it to an Internet marketer.

The marketer then allegedly used the list to promote his online gambling operation and sold the names to other spammers, according to prosecutors.

Smathers, 24, faces up to 15 years in prison on charges of conspiracy and interstate trafficking of stolen property, but was expected to receive a sentence closer to 18 to 24 months.