WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A North Carolina man was sentenced to nine years in prison for sending hundreds of thousands of "spam" e-mail messages, Virginia prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Jeremy Jaynes, of Raleigh, North Carolina was found guilty under a state law that sets limits on the number of e-mails marketers can send in a given time period and prohibits them from using fake e-mail addresses, state Virginia State Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said.

Jaynes' sister, Jessica DeGroot, was also found guilty and fined $7,500, Kilgore said. An associate, Richard Rutkowski, was found not guilty.

Jaynes, who used the alias Gaven Stubberfield, was ranked by the watchdog group Spamhaus as the eighth-most prolific spammer in the world when he was arrested last December.

The messages sent out by Jaynes advertised penny stocks, low mortgage rates and software to erase Internet browsing records, Virginia officials said.

Jaynes sent out more than 100,000 such messages over a 30-day period in July and August 2003 in violation of state law, according to the charges.

DeGroot was convicted after prosecutors proved she used her credit card to help out the operation.

"This is a major victory for Virginians and all Americans," Kilgore said in a statement.

Jaynes' attorney was not immediately available for comment.

Though both lived in North Carolina, Virginia asserted jurisdiction because they sent messages through server computers located in the state.

Roughly 50 percent of the world's Internet traffic passes through Virginia, home to big Internet companies like MCI Inc. (MCIP.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) America Online unit.

Many forms of spam are also illegal under a national law that took effect in January.

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