Porn site scammer goes offline

2004-02-27 12:00

New York - A website operator who used misspellings of popular names to direct minors to sex-oriented internet sites was sentenced on Thursday to 30 months in prison, prosecutors said.

Justice department officials said John Zuccarini, 53, was arrested last September in his Hollywood, Florida, hotel room and pleaded guilty in December to violating the Truth in Domain Names Act.

He was accused of deceptively registering sites to capture internet users who misspelled names - for example www.dinseyland.com instead of www.disneyland.com - in the scheme that officials said earned him as much as $1m a year.

"Individuals who use trickery and deceit to lure children to X-rated websites must know that they will pay a price for their criminal conduct," Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a statement.

"The Truth in Domain Names Act was designed to create a safer, cleaner online environment for children," he said. "As today's sentence demonstrates, those who violate that law and expose innocent children to pornography for their own financial gain will be prosecuted, and they will serve time in jail."

It was the first prosecution sought under the Truth in Domain Names Act that became law last year, authorities said.

According to prosecutors, Zuccarini registered at least 3 000 misleading domain names, including multiple misspellings of legitimate domain names.

For example, he registered the domain name www.bobthebiulder.com and www.teltubbies.com, which are misspellings of the websites for cartoon shows Bob The Builder and Teletubbies.

Those accessing the sites were directed to adult-oriented websites such as "www.hanky-panky-college.com" and others that contained hard-core pornography, officials said.

- AFP