Kilbride got a stiffer sentence, says the Department of Justice for obstructing justice "by attempting to prevent a government witness from testifying at trial." The DOJ didn’t say whether it was one of three "co-conspirators," one of eight citizen spam recipients from Massachusetts, Texas, Iowa, California and Arizona, or other witnesses.

After the passing of the CAN-SPAM Act in 2003, Kilbride and Schaffer logged into remote servers in Amsterdam to make it appear the messages were coming from outside the US. They were actually sent from Phoenix.

Evidence at trial established that they set up a shell corporation in the Republic of Mauritius, and were funneling proceeds to offshore accounts there, as well as on the Isle of Man.

Show there’s no honor among spammers, three "co-conspirators," Jennifer Clason, 32, of Tempe, Ariz.; Andrew Ellifson, 31, of Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Kirk Rogers, 43, of Manhattan Beach, Calif., all turned on Kilbride and Schaffer in court, and pleaded guilty for their roles in the operation.

The millions of unsolicited messages sent had fake headers and domain names, and included hard core pornography images in the emails themselves in order to entice recipients to sign up for memberships. Some were viewed by recipients’ children, even after filters were set up to block such content.

Two men plead guilty to violating a number of copyright infringement laws while operating a P2P network that oversaw the exchange of music, movies, and software.

According to Reuters, “William Trowbridge, 50, of Johnson City, New York, and Michael Chicoine, 47, of San Antonio, face up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 in the criminal convictions stemming from an August raid, the department said late on Tuesday.”

Trowbridge ran a hub called the Movie Room hub, while Chicoine ran Achenon’s Alley TM. Each had sharing requirements in order to participate. While pursuing the two men, government investigators downloaded an estimated $25000 worth of copywritten material from their hubs.

The two face sentencing on April 29 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.