Todd Moeller of New Jersey was sentenced to 27 months for his part in sending 'spam' e-mails to more then 1.2 million AOL subscribers. Sadly it seems that the scheme actually made Moeller, and his partner Adam Vitale quite a fortune: almost $40,000 a month!
Their spamming was done via traditional monkeying with open mail servers and header tinkering. Low-tech, but perhaps it doesn't take a lot to fool AOL customers or AOL's mail servers.
“Moeller and Adam Vitale of New York pleaded guilty earlier this year to breaking anti-spam laws and defeating AOL's filter system by using a variety of computer servers and changing the header information on e-mails to ensure they could not be traced, court papers said.”
While the defendants were obviously wrong about the e-mails being untraceable, one has to wonder if these two guys are going to become hot recruitment prospects for advertisers who engage in viral marketing.