Jason Smathers, a former America Online engineer and self-described cyberspace outlaw, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for stealing a subscriber list spammers used to send billions of unsolicited e-mails.

The case, one of the first of its kind, was brought under a new federal law banning unsolicited and deceptive emails. The statute took effect January 1,2004. Smathers pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the anti-spam law and interstate transportation of stolen property.

Smathers, 25, admitted stealing an AOL list with 92 million subscriber screen names. He said in February that he sold the list for $28,000 to another man, who then sold it to spammers who used it to send as many as 7 billion e-mails.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Siegal asked U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York to send a message that the Internet “is not lawless.'” Before imposing sentence, Judge Hellerstein told Smathers, “You committed a very serious offense.”

Smathers worked in the Dulles, Va., office of AOL, a unit of Time Warner Incorporated, the world’s biggest media company. When he was charged last year, prosecutors said one of the spammers who bought the AOL list used it to send e-mails marketing herbal penile enlargement pills.

Prosecutors said AOL spent $300,000 processing the billions of spam e-mails. Judge Hellerstein doubted AOL lost that much and said that later this month, he may order Smathers to pay $84,000 in restitution. He asked AOL to prove how much it lost.

Prosecutors say another man, Sean Dunaway, purchased the list from Smathers in May 2003 and used it to promote his own Internet gambling operation. Mr. Dunaway, who has pleaded innocent, sold the list to other spammers for $52,000, the government says.