Two Californian students have been sentenced to 27 months in
prison for sending 50 million fraudulent e-mails offering work in
exchange for a $35 "processing" fee. Over 12,000 individuals sent
their money to fictitious businesses.
Steve Shklovskiy and Yan Shtok, both 23, received prison
sentences and have been ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution for
their parts in the scam, at least $320,000 less than the sum
apparently made. Two others involved were sentenced to
probation.
The college students devised a means of using commercially
available software to “harvest” e-mail addresses on their PCs.
Their spam e-mails offered work from home stuffing envelopes
subject to payment of the $35 “processing fee.“ Thousands of
recipients sent their money to fictitious businesses at postal box
addresses.
According to Associated Press, ISPs including AOL, AT&T and
Mindspring were threatened with system overload by the sending of
the bulk e-mails.
