[February 02, 2006]

2 from Valley cited in illegal spam ring: Californian enters guilty plea in adult images scheme

(Tribune, The (Mesa, AZ) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Feb. 2--Federal law enforcement officials in the Valley on Wednesday touted the second successful conviction in a major international computer spamming operation they said involved people in California, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and Tempe.

Kirk Rogers, 43, of Manhattan Beach, Calif., pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court of Arizona to aiding and abetting others to violate CAN-SPAM -- Controlling Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing.

In his plea agreement, Rogers said he aided and abetted three individuals, including Jennifer R. Clason, 32, formerly of Tempe, and James R. Schaffer, 39, of Paradise Valley, in sending out massive amounts of spam emails that contained adult images, a news release said.

Prosecutors said they are using the CAN-SPAM Act -- passed by Congress in 2003 -- to go directly after spammers, who were viewed previously by law enforcement officials as facilitators of information. The federal law is designed to crack down on the Internet transmission of bulk, unsolicited, commercial e-mail messages.

"This is a fairly new statute, and now it's a tool to prosecute more people sending out spam to Internet users," said John Lopez, an assistant U.S. attorney working on the case in the Phoenix office.

"Many of these spammers use misleading company

names and send out fraudulent e-mails without warning what the content is, and this adds another tier of concern because what's in the spam often are embedded into a user's e-mail and they'll continue receiving them," he said.

U.S. Attorney for Arizona Paul K. Charlton and Alice Fisher, U.S. assistant attorney general, announced the conviction on Wednesday in the news release.

Rogers' spam operation distributed more than a million misleading e-mails to America Online Inc. users, generating 600,000 complaints to AOL between Jan. 30 and June 9, 2004.

At the same time, the operation collected more than $1 million from adult Web sites that advertised or were embedded within e-mails sent out by members of the spam ring.

Internet users opened the e-mails that purported to be from overseas companies called The Compliance Company and Ganymede Marketing. If the user clicked on a link in the e-mail, an adult Web site popped up.

That Web site would then be alerted that the spam had been received and Rogers' operation would receive a payment, Lopez said.

"More people are using computers and e-mail, and software continues to make it more efficient for these spammers to send these things out in their e-mails," Lopez said.

The FBI field office in Phoenix investigated the case and also was concerned about the far-reaching problems it caused Internet users, said FBI special agent Deborah McCarley.

"The people sending out spam also can send e-mails out on behalf of other recipients," McCarley said. "A lot of spam e-mails are fraudulent and these people sending them out make a lot of money off them."

Rogers, who will be sentenced June 5, agreed to forfeit money obtained in the commission of these crimes and could face a maximum of five years in prison. Lopez said the exact amount to be forfeited will be worked out in the coming months.

Rogers developed and then managed the computer system to transmit the spam emails on behalf of Clason, Schaffer and Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 39, of Venice, Calif., who have been indicted in the case and are accused of personally benefitting from the spam operation, the release stated.

Rogers didn't return voice mail messages Wednesday.

Rogers joins Scottsdale resident Andrew Ellifson, 31, the first in the nation to be convicted of anti-spam laws when he pleaded guilty in February 2005 to two related counts in connection to the same case, the release stated. His sentencing date also is June 5.

Trial for Clason, Kilbride and Schaffer is scheduled for May 2.

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