AOL thief gets seven years in jail

The justice system is attempting to send another message to spammers in the U.S., with a convicted spammer now heading off to prison for seven years. The spammer wasn't just an email spammer, but was using malicious tactics to pilfer money from people by denying them access to the Internet. In particular, he targeted AOL customers and would hijack their systems, demanding in a coercive fashion a credit card number or other information. Failure to provide said information would result in the person not being able to access AOL.

On top of spending the better part of a decade in prison, the culprit will also be under probation afterwards for several more years. Given how touchy of a subject identify theft is in today's world, I am surprised he wasn't sentenced for an even longer term.