JURY FINDS BUFFALO SPAMMER GUILTY OF IDENTITY THEFT AND FORGERY

Department of Law

1st April 2004

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer today announced that an Erie County jury has returned a guilty verdict against Howard Carmack, the email marketer known as the "Buffalo Spammer." In May of 2003 Carmack was indicted for sending hundreds of millions of forged spam emails through accounts he opened using stolen identities.

Carmack was found guilty of stealing the identity of two Buffalo-area residents to open Internet access accounts with EarthLink, an Internet Service Provider (ISP). He was also found guilty of falsifying business records of EarthLink, when he forged the headers of email sent from the EarthLink accounts.

Judge Michael D'Amico remanded Carmack to Erie County jail pending sentencing on May 27, 2004.

The case is the first case prosecuted by the Attorney General's office under New York's identity theft statute. The investigation was a cooperative effort by the Attorney General's Office, the New York State Police and the FBI's Buffalo Cyber Task Force.

"The guilty verdict rendered by the jury in this case shows that those engaged in identity theft and cyber-crime will be discovered prosecuted and convicted of their crimes," Spitzer said.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant Attorneys General Paul McCarthy and Cydney Kelly of the Criminal Prosecutions Bureau, with assistance from Stephen Kline of the Internet Bureau, was investigated by James Domres and Vanessa Ip.

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