Tech Shout!

On Monday, Adam Vitale, residing in Adam Vitale pleaded guilty in federal court to spamming 1.2 million AOL users.

The 26 year old man admitted to the charges levied on him, which accused him of working with co-conspirators in a scheme that breached the Can Spam Act, the federal anti-spam e-mail law, as per a release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

Slated to be sentenced on Sept. 13 in a U.S. District Court, Vitale faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

The government stated that at the time of his plea, Vitale had confessed that he tried to hide the spam’s true origin using “whatever means necessary,” including altering the e-mail’s header information.

A confidential informant was used by the government investigators to communicate and set up a deal with both Vitale and his accomplice, Todd Moeller. Between April and August 2005, Vitale and Moeller revealed to the informant about instant messaging and about their capability to send large amounts of spam that was close to impossible to locate. Further more, prosecutors also reported that Vitale and Moeller claimed they had the ability to defeat AOL’s spam filter.

The government further revealed that the informant put forth an opportunity in front of the men that enabled them to send out spam advertising a product he supposedly wanted to sell. Moeller and Vitale admitted that they did all this for a 50% cut of the profits. Between Aug. 17 and Aug. 23 2005, they sent out spam to about 1.2 million AOL subscribers. The indictment said that in less than a week in August 2005, Vitale and Moeller sent e-mails on behalf of the informant to over 1,277,000 addresses of subscribers at AOL, the online division of Time Warner Inc.

Moeller, who lives in New Jersey, told the informant through instant messaging he had 40 different servers to send spam e-mails from and made $US40,000 ($NZ54,000) a month from other spam e-mails promoting stocks, court papers stated.

The case is being prosecuted by the Computer Hacking/Intellectual Property group of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Brown is leading the prosecution.

Moeller faces the same charges as Vitale.