A man accused of using EarthLink Inc. e-mail accounts to release a flood of unsolicited commercial ("spam") e-mail on the Internet has been convicted on charges of identity theft and falsifying business records

A man accused of using EarthLink Inc. e-mail accounts to release a flood of unsolicited commercial ("spam") e-mail on the Internet has been convicted on charges of identity theft and falsifying business records, according to a statement from New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Howard Carmack of Buffalo, New York, also known as the "Buffalo Spammer," was found guilty by a jury in Erie County, New York, on 14 counts, including charges that he stole the identity of two Buffalo-area residents, which he then used to send out more than 800 million spam messages, the attorney general's office said. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 27, and faces between three and seven years in prison. The New York State case against Carmack was the first to use a new state identity theft law that makes identity theft a misdemeanor, said Brad Maione, a spokesman for the attorney general's office. Previously, identity theft was not a crime, he said. The charges of falsifying business records stem from Carmack's changing of e-mail header information to create forged sender addresses for the spam messages, the attorney general's office said.