Two men from Los Angeles who were involved in sending 50 million e-mails as part of a scam that nearly brought two of the largest internet providers to a standstill, have been jailed for two years.

Steve Shklovskiy and Yan Shtok had devised a way of using personal computers with commercially available software that harvested electronic mail addresses so that they could mass e-mail requesting £24 as a processing fee in exchange for a chance to work from home stuffing envelopes.

This scheme duped more than 12,000 people and internet providers such as AOL, AT&T and Mindspring were besieged with customer complaints which threatened their systems with overload.

Both men pleaded guilty to fraud charges in December 1999 and they were also asked to reveal to the internet providers how they managed to set up their scheme.