Home
>
Spam Blocking
>
Spammer in the Slammer: Jeremy Jaynes Sentenced to Nine Years

Spammer in the Slammer: Jeremy Jaynes Sentenced to Nine Years

Will other spammers take heed? Don't count on it.

Jeremy Jaynes was on top of the world. By age 28, he owned a million-dollar home, a high-class restaurant, a chain of gyms and countless other toys. Yet those were only the spoils of his main line of business, which was swindling innocent people out of their money through email scams. From an unassuming house serving as his company's headquarters in Raleigh, NC, Jaynes sent an estimated ten million messages a day pitching products most recipients didn't want, amassing an estimated $24 million fortune in the process. Using aliases such as Jeremy James and Gaven Stubberfield, Jaynes spammed his way up to the #8 position on Spamhaus' Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) and grossed as much as $750,000 a month, allowing him to live like a king.

However, Jaynes ran head-on into an information superhighway road block when a Virginia judge sentenced him to nine years in prison for his November 2004 conviction on felony charges of using false IP addresses to send mass email advertisements (some just call it spamming). The conviction was a landmark decision, as Jaynes became the first person in the United States convicted of felony spam charges. Though his operation was based in North Carolina, Jaynes was tried in Virginia because it is home to a large number of the routers that control much of North America's Internet traffic (it's also the home of AOL and a government building or two).

He should've Used the Privacy Software

During the trial, prosecutors focused on three of Jaynes' most egregious scams: software that promised to protect users' private information; a service for choosing penny stocks to invest in; and a work-from-home "FedEx refund processor" opportunity that promised $75-an-hour work but did little more than give buyers access to a website of delinquent FedEx accounts. Sound familiar? Anyone with an e-mail address has received countless messages originating from Jaynes' operation. (If you're still waiting on your privacy software to show up, it's probably safe to stop checking the mailbox.)

Jaynes got lists of millions of email addresses through a stolen database of America Online customers. He also illegally obtained e-mail addresses of eBay users. While the prosecutors still don't know how Jaynes got access to the lists, the Associated Press reported that the AOL names matched a list of 92 million addresses that an AOL software engineer has been charged with stealing.

When Jaynes' operation was raided, investigators found that the house from which he ran his operation was wired with 16 T-1 lines (a large office building can get by on a single T-1 line for all its users). Investigators also entered into evidence to-do lists handwritten by Jaynes. Take a look at Jeremy Jayne's meticulously detailed lists at:

* www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes1.JPG
* www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes2.JPG
* www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes3.JPG

Good Work if You Can Get (Away With) It

The economics of spamming makes Jaynes' decision to build a career of it understandable, though not noble. Spammers work on the law of averages, which would seem like an odd strategy considering that the average response rate for a spam message is just one-tenth of one percent. However, once you do the math even this miniscule response rate can make one very wealthy very quickly. If a spammer sends one million messages pushing a product width a $40 profit, a response rate of 0.1 percent works out to 1000 customers, or $40,000 per million messages sent. Since each message costs only fractions of a penny to send, and Jaynes was sending literally billions of messages a year, it's easy to see how he pulled in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead.

The fact that spamming can be such a profitable undertaking means that the profession is not likely to go anywhere in the near future. Spammers have financial motivation to come up with innovative ways to avoid detection, and they have begun to join forces. While the landmark decision handed down in the Jaynes trial may serve as a deterrent to some would-be spammers, it is unlikely that the threat of prosecution will keep future spammers from refining their trade. For now and the foreseeable future, the answer still lies in technology, not law enforcement.

Dr. Paul Judge is a noted scholar and entrepreneur. He is Chief Technology Officer at CipherTrust, the industry's largest provider of enterprise email security. The company's flagship product, IronMail provides a best of breed enterprise anti spam solution designed to stop spam, phishing attacks and other email-based threats. Learn more by visiting enterprise anti spam solution today.

cleaning help near Mundelein ..

In The News:

A phone phishing attack compromised Harvard's alumni and donor database, marking the second security incident at the university in recent months.

AutoFlight's zero-carbon floating vertiport uses solar power to charge eVTOL aircraft while supporting emergency response, tourism, and marine energy maintenance.

A new phone return scam targets recent buyers with fake carrier calls. Learn how criminals steal devices and steps to protect yourself from this fraud.

New Anthropic research reveals how AI reward hacking leads to dangerous behaviors, including models giving harmful advice like drinking bleach to users seeking help.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Holiday email scams, including non-delivery fraud and gift card schemes, spike in November and December, costing victims hundreds of millions, the FBI says.

Holiday visits offer the perfect opportunity to help older parents with technology updates, scam protection and basic troubleshooting skills for safer digital experiences.

Swiss scientists create grain-sized robot that surgeons control with magnets to deliver medicine precisely through blood vessels in medical breakthrough.

Researchers exploited WhatsApp's API vulnerability to scrape 3.5 billion phone numbers. Learn how this massive data breach happened and protect yourself.

Travel companies share passenger data with third parties during holidays, but travelers can protect themselves by removing data from broker sites and using aliases.

Xpeng's humanoid robot moves so realistically that crowds believed it was fake, marking a major advancement in robotics technology ahead of 2026 commercial launch.

Researchers discover phishing scam using invisible characters to evade email security, with protection tips including password managers and two-factor authentication.

iPhone and Android users can reduce battery drain and data usage by restricting Background App Refresh to Wi-Fi connections instead of mobile networks.

Scammers nearly stole an Apple account by exploiting the support system with authentic-looking tickets and phone calls, users can protect themselves with safety steps.

FoloToy restored sales of its AI teddy bear Kumma after a weeklong suspension following safety group findings of risky and inappropriate responses to children.

Threat intelligence firm Synthient uncovers one of the largest password exposures ever, prompting immediate security recommendations.

Viral video shared by Elon Musk shows Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots performing tasks from cooking to construction, garnering over 58.5 million views on social media.

Chinese hackers used Anthropic's Claude AI to launch autonomous cyberattacks on 30 organizations worldwide, marking a major shift in cybersecurity threats.

Apple's new Sleep Score feature gives you a rating for your nightly rest quality. Learn how to set it up on your Apple Watch and iPhone today.

Essential phone settings to enable before losing your device, including Find My network, location services and security features for iPhone and Android.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Cybersecurity research shows weak passwords remain a major threat, with simple patterns and number sequences putting millions of accounts at risk.

New Android malware BankBot YNRK silences phones, steals banking data and drains crypto wallets automatically. Learn how this advanced threat works.

FDA approves first human trial for Paradromics' brain-computer interface that could restore speech for paralyzed patients through neural technology.

New phishing platform QRR targets Microsoft 365 users across 1,000 domains in 90 countries. Learn how to spot fake login pages and protect your accounts.

Spammer in the Slammer: Jeremy Jaynes Sentenced to Nine Years

Spam Blocking