Free Republic

RICHMOND (AP) -- The Virginia Court of Appeals yesterday upheld the nation's first felony conviction of illegal spamming. Jeremy Jaynes, of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the top 10 spammers in the world at the time of his arrest, used the Internet to peddle pornography and sham products and services, prosecutors said. Thousands of people fell for his scam, grossing Jaynes' operations up to $750,000 per month, investigators said. In its unanimous ruling, the appeals court wrote that Virginia has a "legitimate public interest" in policing unsolicited e-mail and that the state anti-spamming law's effect on interstate commerce "is incidental and...

Case results in the nation's first-ever felony spam convictions. A brother and sister were convicted this week of three felony charges of sending thousands of junk e-mails through servers located in Virginia, according to Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. The convictions of Jeremy Jaynes, who was sentenced to nine years in prison, and his sister, Jessica DeGroot, who was fined $7500, were the nation's first-ever felony spam convictions, Kilgore says in a statement. A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski, was found not guilty, the attorney general says. The cases were heard in Loudoun County Circuit Court. The case was prosecuted by...