Not Just an Online Threat Evidently not satisfied with stealing bandwidth, Richter also shows a penchant for heavy equipment. In an unrelated 2003 case, he was put on probation after pleading guilty to a felony charge of receiving stolen items worth more than $10,000. According to court records, an informant's tip regarding a stolen Bobcat loader led undercover officers to Richter. Over course of 13 months, officers proceeded to strike deals with him for a Honda generator, hundreds of cases of cigarettes, three laptop computers and other items, all offered at suspiciously low prices and purchased in some of Denver’s seediest neighborhoods. In addition to probation, Richter was also ordered to pay $38,000 in restitution for stolen goods.

Despite his guilty plea, Richter maintains his innocence, saying he pleaded guilty to felony charges because it was "easier to be done with it," and he had "too much stuff going on in my life."

What’s Next for Scott Richter? The 5-year-old OptInRealBig.com, which employed 25 people last year and had 350 clients, will continue to operate under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While bankruptcy filing shows power of legislation and legal action from parties with a vested interest in stopping spam, Richter is not likely to fade quietly into sunset. Under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws, company must follow a court-supervised “debt rehabilitation” plan to pay off creditors, but is not required to modify its business practices. None of OptInRealBig’s assets will be liquidated, meaning company’s stable of spam cannons will remain active. The bottom line: Scott Richter will not be required to stop sending UCE in immediate future, pending ongoing litigation intended to determine exactly what spam is in legal terms. In meantime, best defense against spam is a comprehensive gateway solution that will guard against all manner of email threats, especially spammers like Scott Richter.

When Jaynes’ operation was raided, investigators found that house from which he ran his operation was wired with 16 T-1 lines (a large office building can get by on a single T-1 line for all its users). Investigators also entered into evidence to-do lists handwritten by Jaynes. Take a look at Jeremy Jayne's meticulously detailed lists at:

* www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes1.JPG * www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes2.JPG * www.ciphertrust.com/images/jaynes_notes3.JPG

Good Work if You Can Get (Away With) It The economics of spamming makes Jaynes’ decision to build a career of it understandable, though not noble. Spammers work on law of averages, which would seem like an odd strategy considering that average response rate for a spam message is just one-tenth of one percent. However, once you do math even this miniscule response rate can make one very wealthy very quickly. If a spammer sends one million messages pushing a product width a $40 profit, a response rate of 0.1 percent works out to 1000 customers, or $40,000 per million messages sent. Since each message costs only fractions of a penny to send, and Jaynes was sending literally billions of messages a year, it’s easy to see how he pulled in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead.

The fact that spamming can be such a profitable undertaking means that profession is not likely to go anywhere in near future. Spammers have financial motivation to come up with innovative ways to avoid detection, and they have begun to join forces. While landmark decision handed down in Jaynes trial may serve as a deterrent to some would-be spammers, it is unlikely that threat of prosecution will keep future spammers from refining their trade. For now and foreseeable future, answer still lies in technology, not law enforcement.