Ralsky admitted committing mail and wire fraud as well as violating a US law that makes it a criminal offence to send large, commercial email messages with the source of the email hidden and using an unauthorised computer.
It is six years after the CAN-SPAM regulation became law, but a Detroit court heard that Ralsky and three others sent billions of emails to inflate the price of Chinese penny shares between January 2004 and September 2005.
The stock fraud scheme is said to have netted Ralsky and his associates $2.7 million. Ralsky told the Detroit court that he took full responsibility for his crimes.
US Attorney Terrence Berg said the court had "made it clear that advancing fraud through the abuse of the internet will lead to several years in prison".
The US government hopes Ralsky's sentence will deter other spammers. Five others are awaiting sentence for their involvement in the scam.
A former insurance salesman, 64-year-old Ralsky was said to be sending 70 million messages a day under false names in the run-up to 2003 when the US enacted CAN-SPAM.
Spamming has been a criminal offence in the UK since 2003, when the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive became law.
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