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March 2, 2005

Spam conviction unraveling?

Thanks to a legal technicality, Jessica DeGroot, sister of convicted felony spammer Jeremy Jaynes, is going free.

A federal court in Virginia has thrown out the case against DeGroot, saying that a jury erred in finding her guilty of violating Virginia's tough spam law.

The judge apparently felt that government prosecutors failed to prove that DeGroot was actually part of her brother's spamming operation, one of the biggest in the world, according to Spamhaus. (Jurors had already acquitted Richard Rutkowski, Jayne's partner.)

But if you watched Jon Praed's presentation at the Jan. 2005 MIT Spam Conference, you know DeGroot and Rutkowski were both key players in the spam ring. Praed showed three pages of notes (screen grab) recovered from Jaynes' office. The notes were a to-do list for DeGroot and Rutkowski. DeGroot's chores included tasks such as cleaning the spammers' email lists of complainers.

In his presentation, Praed explained that the notes could not be used as evidence against DeGroot and Rutkowski because of some legal technicality. (Click this link to watch Praed talk about the notes via RealPlayer.)

As a result, prosecutors unsuccessfully tried to use a credit card receipt to prove her involvement in the business.

Prosecutors are probably happy just to have Jaynes behind bars. But will the nine-year sentence against him stick? We'll find out next month, when the court holds a sentencing hearing.

Posted by brian at March 2, 2005 10:12 AM