The “spam king” was sentenced on Tuesday to 47 months in prison, with a ruling that the court hopes sends a message to other online criminals.

Robert Soloway is the second person in the country to be convicted under the Can-Spam Act for flooding the virtual world with fraudulent e-mail messages. His sentence of 47 months is less than half of what prosecutors wanted.

Robert Alan Soloway, who pleaded guilty in March to mail fraud, e-mail fraud and tax evasion, was sentenced to three years and 11 months in federal prison; a judge will decide later how must restitution he must pay.

Prosecutors said Soloway made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling so-called “broadcast e-mail services” and used networks of compromised computers to send out millions upon millions of junk e-mails.

In her sentencing memo, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma wrote, “he is known worldwide for the volume and markedly malicious nature of his criminal spamming activity, the fraudulent ‘spam promotion’ sales scheme associated with it and for brazen and even boastful claims that he is above the law and anyone — including federal judges — who would dare attempt to seek his compliance with it.”