Another spammer has been convicted to jail time. Robert Alan Soloway, also known as the Spam King, has been sentenced to nearly 4 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of e-mail fraud, mail fraud, and tax evasion back in March – a rather lenient verdict considering he was facing a maximum sentence of 26 years behind bars.

The prosecution argued that Soloway should get more prison time, asking for a sentence of 7 - 9 years to echo the severity of past sentences in similar spam cases. The defense countered that Soloway didn't damage anyone’s computer, he didn’t send out malicious code, and he never directed people to pornography, as some spammers have done.

Robert Soloway is the second person in the US to be convicted under the Can-Spam Act for flooding people’s inboxes with fraudulent email messages. But while the Soloway case is seen as a step forward in the fight against the spam nuisance, another convicted offender with the same criminal moniker escaped from a federal minimum-security prison camp in Colorado over the weekend.