LEESBURG, Va. — From a nondescript house in a neighboring state, Jeremy Jaynes and his sister raked in more than $24 million from fake Internet offers of penny-stock picker schemes, nonexistent FedEx refunds, cheap drugs and pornography.
They did it by flooding the inboxes of millions of Internet users with junk e-mails known as spam. Indeed, Jaynes was ranked among the top 10 spammers in the world.
But last week in this picturesque town that was founded in 1758, Jaynes' schemes fell victim to what government officials and anti-spam groups hope will become an increasingly effective weapon against Internet fraud: hefty doses of time behind bars.
Using a new state anti-spam law that is considered the toughest in the nation, a Virginia jury convicted North Carolina residents Jaynes and Jessica DeGroot of sending untraceable junk e-mails to millions of customers of America Online, which is based in Dulles, Va.
It was the first conviction under the law, the first in the nation to make it a felony to send large numbers of fraudulent, unsolicited e-mail messages.
In a state that is home to some of the nations' largest Internet service providers, the jury's decision was a milestone in another way: It made it likely that Jaynes would serve substantial prison time. The trial judge will not impose sentence until February, but the jury recommended nine years.
DeGroot, 28, who was found to have played only a supporting role in her brother's activities, was fined $7,500. A third defendant was acquitted. Jaynes' lawyer is contesting the prosecutions.
Although building legal cases against spammers and bringing them to court can be difficult given the global nature of the Internet, state officials and anti-spam advocates hoped this case and others in the works would reverberate beyond the mid-Atlantic region -- much the way high-profile legal action has put a crimp in the illegal downloading of music from the Internet.
"These convictions and the prison sentence for kingpin spammer Jaynes send a resounding message from Virginia to spammers around the world," said Richard Campbell, deputy attorney general for the commonwealth. "If you defraud individuals and encumber ISPs with illegal spam, there are consequences."
Spam has confounded government and private sector officials for years. Despite hundreds of civil lawsuits, and a bundle of federal and state laws, the unsolicited e-mails now account for 70% of all e-mail traffic, according to anti-spam organizations.
