Howard Carmack

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Howard Carmack (also known as the Buffalo Spammer) was the first spammer, i.e. notorious sender of spam e-mails, to be sentenced to a time in jail.

He was arrested in May 2003 and first freed for a bail of $20,000.

The prosecution succeeded in demonstrating to the jury of a court in the state of New York that he had sent out 825 million spam e-mails via the Internet service provider Earthlink, using the identities of two people from the city of Buffalo as well as hundreds of aliases. The jury found him guilty in March 2004 of a New York misdemeanor, identity theft, and 14 counts of fraud.

Although there now is a United States federal law restricting fraudulent practices in spam, Carmack was not convicted under this law, since it was not yet in force at the time of the offenses. However, he was convicted for violating New York state laws regarding identity theft and falsification of documents, header and sender information in this case. In May 2004 the court sentenced him to the maximum sentence for this offense, namely 7 years in prison.

Before this conviction, Carmack also lost a lawsuit before a federal court in Atlanta, which required him to pay damages of US$14.5 million to the internet service provider Earthlink for the same actions.

See also: List of e-mail spammers