Buffalo Spammer Sentenced to Prison

A New York man convicted of using Earthlink's network to send hundreds of millions of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages was sentenced to prison this week.

Howard Carmack was sentenced to three and a half to seven years in prison, according to Brad Maione, a spokesperson for New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Carmack of Buffalo, New York, also known as the "Buffalo Spammer," was sentenced by senior Erie County Judge Michael D'Amico in Buffalo.

Identity Theft

The sentence is the first obtained following a conviction using the state's identity theft law, Maione says.

Carmack was found guilty in April by a jury in Erie County, New York 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 says.

The New York State case followed a civil suit against Carmack 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 says.