Spammer Receives 15-Month Sentence
Engineer Stole, Sold AOL Screen Names
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 18, 2005; Page D05
A former America Online Inc. engineer was sentenced yesterday to 15 months in prison for stealing the company's entire subscriber list, which was used to send hundreds of millions of spam e-mails to AOL members.
Jason Smathers of Harpers Ferry, W.Va., pleaded guilty in February to using another America Online employee's ID to break into the company's database and steal 92 million screen names used by the Dulles Internet company's nearly 30 million subscribers.
