'Buffalo Spammer' gets 3.5 to 7 years in prison

He used EarthLink to send out 800 million e-mails

By Paul Roberts

May 27, 2004 12:00 PM ET

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IDG News Service - A New York man convicted of using the network of Internet service provider EarthLink Inc. to send out hundreds of millions of unsolicited commercial e-mails was sentenced to between three and a half and seven years in prison yesterday, according to Brad Maione, a spokesman for New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
Howard Carmack, of Buffalo, N.Y., also known as the "Buffalo Spammer," was sentenced by senior Erie County Judge Michael D'Amico in Buffalo. The sentence is the first obtained following a conviction using the state's identity theft law, Maione said.
Carmack was found guilty in April by a jury in Erie County on 14 counts, including charges that he stole the identity of two Buffalo-area residents, which he then used to send out more than 800 million spam messages, the attorney general's office said.
The New York state case followed a civil suit by EarthLink that resulted in a $16 million award against Carmack in May 2003.
EarthLink cooperated with the attorney general's office in its investigation and testified against Carmack in the criminal case, according to New York Assistant Attorney General Paul McCarthy.
The jail sentence is the maximum allowed under the law, due to Carmack's prior felony conviction for fraud in a federal case involving fake money orders, McCarthy said.

Reprinted with permission from

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