AOL Employee Faces Charges In Spam Probe
By JULIA ANGWIN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL June 23, 2004 8:42 p.m.
Federal prosecutors charged an America Online employee with conspiring to sell the Internet service's entire list of subscribers -- with 92 million e-mail addresses -- to people intending to send junk e-mail, known as spam.
Prosecutors also charged a Las Vegas resident, Sean Dunaway, with buying the e-mail list from the employee, Jason Smathers of Harpers Ferry, W.Va., and selling it to spammers. Messrs. Smathers and Dunaway were arrested yesterday.
David N. Kelley, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the case is one of the first to be brought under the new federal CAN-SPAM act. Prosecutors say Messrs. Smathers and Dunaway each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison plus fines.
Messrs. Smathers and Dunaway couldn't be reached for comment.
In a statement, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL division said it learned about the alleged problem earlier this year when it was pursuing litigation against a major spammer. During its investigation, AOL learned that an employee had allegedly stolen e-mail addresses and sold them, the company said.
AOL, Dulles, Va., said it turned over the evidence to federal prosecutors. AOL said it has no reason to believe that any credit-card numbers or passwords were stolen.
Mr. Smathers, a 24-year-old AOL software engineer, worked in AOL's Data Warehouse, which contains customer information. Mr. Smathers wasn't authorized to view the customer information, but he allegedly used another employee's ID to gain access to the database. He allegedly assembled a list of AOL customers' screen names, ZIP Codes and telephone numbers.
In their complaint, federal prosecutors cite an unnamed source who allegedly twice purchased the AOL lists from Mr. Dunaway. In May 2003, the source allegedly purchased the entire list of 92 million names from Mr. Dunaway for $2,000 per letter of the alphabet, or $52,000 total. In March, the source allegedly purchased an updated version of the original list, with only about 18 million names, for $32,500.
