NEW YORK, May 28: A man dubbed the "Buffalo spammer" and accused of sending out hundreds of millions of e-mail ads as part of a fraud scheme, was sentenced to seven years in prison.

State judge Michael D'Amico in Buffalo, New York, said he handed down the sentence of 3-1/2 to seven years on Thursday for Howard Carmack, who was convicted earlier this year on 14 counts of forgery, fraud, identity theft and other crimes.

Mr Carmack had been charged with stealing the identity of two Buffalo-area residents to open Internet access accounts with Earth Link, forging the headers of e-mails sent from the Earth Link accounts, and possessing a software program designed to create the forged e-mails. -AFP