A federal judge in Arizona sentenced two men to more than five years in prison for an international pornographic spamming business that grossed more than $1 million.
Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, Calif., was sentenced to 72 months and James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, was sentenced to 63. Kilbride received a longer sentence based on the court’s finding that he had obstructed justice by attempting to prevent a government witness from testifying at the trial.
The sentencing follows a three-week trial that concluded June 25 with a federal jury finding the two guilty on eight counts.
The trial in Phoenix was the first to include charges under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, a law designed to crack down on the transmission of pornography in commercial bulk unsolicited electronic mail messages, federal officials said.
The business model consisted of sending millions of unsolicited email messages that advertised commercial Internet hard-core pornography Web sites. Images were embedded in each email and were visible to any person who opened the message. Kilbride and Schaffer earned a commission for each person they caused to subscribe to one of these Web sites.
The two also were fined $100,000 and ordered to pay $77,500 in restitution to AOL Inc. Judge David Campbell also ordered the defendants to forfeit more than $1.1 million, the amount of illegal proceeds from their spamming operation.
The Business Journal of Phoenix