AOL Employee Arrested

[Scott Rothgaber <sc...@palmetto.tv>]

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.