BellSouth Investigation Leads to Guilty Plea in Spamming Case
State of Florida Prosecutes and Convicts Spammer on Felony Charge

For Immediate Release:

March 1, 2005

Atlanta, Ga. -- BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) announced today that its investigation of a spamming operation has resulted in a guilty plea from Charles Frye, of Daytona Beach, Fla. Frye pled guilty to a charge which involved sending millions of deceptive "spam" e-mails using BellSouth® Internet Services accounts to Internet customers throughout 2002.

"This ruling is a true triumph for our customers," said Richard Burns, vice president - Internet service operations, BellSouth. "BellSouth will continue to assist and cooperate with law enforcement officials who prosecute Internet offenders. We are committed to protecting our customers, and will work to provide them with the highest quality Internet experience."

In a case prosecuted in Florida's Seventh Judicial Circuit court, Frye pled guilty to an offense against intellectual property-computer fraud, which involved cracking user pass codes and hijacking BellSouth subscriber Internet accounts to send large amounts of spam.

Frye was sentenced to one year in prison and an additional three years suspended sentence, with tightly supervised probation for a total of six years. The judge banned him from owning, leasing or using a computer or accessing the Internet for the entire six-year probationary period. In addition, the court ordered restitution to BellSouth to be paid by Frye upon his release.

Frye's conviction is the latest in a series of cases in which BellSouth has cooperated with and assisted state and federal law enforcement officials to prosecute spammers or other individuals who seek to defraud Internet customers or degrade the Internet experience. These cases reflect BellSouth's continuing fight against spam and other forms of Internet fraud.

BellSouth customers receive free basic security products from BellSouth as part of their BellSouth® FastAccess® DSL or Dial Internet service, including spam and e-mail virus filtering, BellSouth® Pop-Up Catcher® and BellSouth® Parental Controls. These applications are downloadable at: home.bellsouth.net/popupinstall. In addition, BellSouth is working to develop a host of new security applications to help keep residential and small business customers safe while online and their PCs free of spyware, viruses and hackers.


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For more information contact:

Nadine Randall, BellSouth
nadine.randall@bellsouth.com
404-829-8724