2.2 Billion Spam Emails Sends Man to Jail in Tokyo

25 year-old Yuki Shiina gets arrested in Tokyo for sending out over 2 billion spam messages promoting dating and gambling websites. Recently an Internet Service Provider (ISP) discovered the activities of this spammer dating back from May 2006. The large number of emails sent over a period of time sparked an interest in this person.

Recently the security vendor Sophos said that Shiina obtained a list of 600,000 email addresses for 100,000 yen ($927) turning that into earnings of 2 million yen ($18,540) in advertising from his email spamming. The law that prohibits sending spam emails with fake sender information was ultimately broke by Shiina and ended his luck behind bars.

Could someone get caught in the United States for Spamming like this?

Spammers are not afraid of getting arrested for sending out junk emails. It is a rare case that a spammer gets arrested for sending out a number of spam messages in the United States. In the case of the Japanese man getting arrested, an ISP was tracking him for some time and he was justifiable breaking a specific law. Spamming is out of control all over the world. A spammer in the United States could get arrested in certain states for sending types of unsolicited email using 3rd party domains but it is not an active or common occurrence.

Each state has a different law or set of laws put in place by legislation regarding spamming. Each state's spamming law-link. An ISP would have to be actively monitoring a spammer over a period of time to uphold the findings in court. It is a good practice to avoid sending out spam emails in the first place to keep your name off of the dirty list and not end up in jail.