P.V. man sentenced in porn spam case

In what federal officials call the nation’s first case to convict spammers, two men involved in an international pornographic spamming business, including one from Paradise Valley, were sentenced to more than five years in prison, the Justice Department announced Friday.

James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, and Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, Calif., who were convicted in June on several felony counts of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and obscenity charges, were sentenced to 63 months and 72 months, respectively.

The case, investigated by the FBI and the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, was the first to include charges under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, the Justice Department said in a statement. The act was designed to crack down on the transmission of pornography in commercial bulk unsolicited e-mail messages.

Schaffer, Kilbride and three others, including Scottsdale resident Andrew Ellifson, 31, and Jennifer Clason, 32, of Tempe, operated a spamming business that grossed more than $1 million in slightly more than one year during 2003.

Ellifson, Clason and Kirk Rogers, 43, of Manhattan Beach, Calif., previously pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme and testified against Kilbride and Schaffer, according to information from the Justice Department, which detailed the following:

• Schaffer’s and Kilbride’s business used falsified headers and domain names that directed Internet users to pornographic sites, netting their business money each time someone tried to call up the fake domain names received in e-mail boxes.

• Beginning in 2003, Schaffer and Kilbride established spamming operations that consisted of sending millions of unsolicited e-mail messages that advertised commercial Internet hard-core pornography Web sites. They earned a commission for each person they caused to subscribe to one of these Web sites. Pornographic images were embedded in each e-mail they sent and were visible to any person who opened them.

• In late 2003, after the CAN-SPAM Act was passed, Kilbride and Schaffer attempted to avoid prosecution by representing that their Valley-based enterprise was offshore.

• During a three-week sentencing hearing that began last month , eight residents from Massachusetts, Texas, Iowa, California and Arizona testified about the context in which members of their families, including children, received the e-mails.

Schaffer and Kilbride, who were sentenced by U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell in Phoenix, were each fined $100,000 and ordered to pay $77,500 in restitution to AOL Inc. (America Online). Campbell ordered the defendants to jointly forfeit more than $1.1 million, the amount of illegal proceeds from their spamming operation, the Justice Department said.

Kilbride received a higher sentence based on the court’s finding that he had obstructed justice by attempting to prevent a government witness from testifying at trial, according to the Justice Department, which said Clason was awaiting sentencing as of Friday. Sentencing information on Ellifson was not available.

AOL and the Federal Trade Commission received more than 1.5 million complaints from spam recipients.