Earlier this week Aunty told you that the former AOL employee who stole the email addresses of 92 million AOL users, and then sold them to a spammer for $100,000, was due in Federal court and was going to plead “guilty” to charges that he violated CAN-SPAM. It was anticipated that Jerry Smathers would face up to two years in prison, and a large fine.

Well, things have not gone quite the way that the prosecution expected.

The judge refused to accept the plea.

Yes, that’s right - this guy was ready to plead guilty - “Yes Judge, I did it”, and the judge said “Not so fast…I won’t let you do that.”
… [Continued…]