NEW YORK: All you spammers beware. A man in Brooklyn has already been paid back, by a court in New York that is.

A federal court in Manhattan sentenced Adam Vitale to 30 months in prison on Tuesday for sending junk emails to more than 1.2 million subscribers of America Online (AOL). Such was the e-guile he used that it even foiled (or fooled) the Internet firm's spam-filtering system.

He had already been ordered to pay $180,000 to AOL in restitution more than a year ago after pleading guilty to violating anti-spam laws.