MU graduates plead guilty in spamming case
Two MU graduates pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges in an e-mail spam conspiracy and agreed to forfeit more than $430,000 in cash and property garnered from the scam, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney for the West District of Missouri.
Amir Ahmad Shah, 29, of St. Louis, his brother, Osmaan Ahmad Shah, 26, of Columbia and their business, i2o, Inc., represented by company president Amir Shah, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud in connection with email and one count of fraud in connection with email, according to release from U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips.
"Conspiring to commit a crime with other people is violation in itself," said Don Ledford, a spokesman for Phillips.
The Shah brothers and their co-conspirators created a spam e-mail scheme that targeted college students across the United States. They developed individualized e-mail extracting programs which they used to harvest student e-mail addresses from MU and hundreds of other universities and colleges.
They then used this database of more than 8 million e-mail addresses to send unsolicited commercial e-mails selling various products and services to the college students.
One of their co-defendants Paul Zucker, 57, of New Jersey, pleaded guilty on July 13 to conspiracy charges.
The Shahs and i2o agreed to forfeit to the government a total of $78,980 contained in several bank accounts, two residential properties in St. Louis and Columbia, a 2001 BMW belonging to Amir Shah and a 2002 Lexus belonging to Osmaan Shah, and several Internet domain names. The total forfeiture amount, including the cash value of the property, is estimated at $439,820.
Ledford said the brothers could have to pay additional restitution if ordered by the court.
"In these kinds of cases where the defendants profitted from criminal activity, we can forfeit their assets to take awa that profit," Ledford said. "The order of restitution is something the court has to grant and is completely separate."
The Shahs face up to eight years each in federal prison and the possible order of restitution. Their sentencing dates will be set after investigations by the United States Probation Office.