Vitale sent spam e-mails that advertised a computer security program with the incentive of receiving 50 percent of the company's profit, according to a Reuters report. What Vitale didn't realize was that the person who lured him into the scam was a confidential government informant.

According to court documents, from April 2005 to August 2005, Vitale broke three antispam laws and informed the government agent of his progress via text messages.

Vitale and his accomplice, Todd Moeller of New Jersey, carried out the scheme by purchasing open proxies to send the e-mails. In addition, the two altered the header of the e-mails in order to deceive AOL's spam filter and disguise their origin.

At one point, Vitale sent 2,500 bogus e-mails in a 24-hour period, 25,000 during a 30-day period and 250,000 spam messages over the course of one year.

U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin handed down the sentence to Vitale. "Spamming is serious criminal conduct; this is not a teenager engaging in child's play," said Chin.