St. Louis — For years, they played on greed. E-mail scammers and spammers have long offered lavish rewards to those naive enough to post cash to spirit money out of a foreign country or to collect on a lottery ticket.
Now cyber-thieves are turning to a sharper edge: death threats and outright extortion.
A woman who works downtown was told in an e-mail Wednesday night that the sender had been paid by someone to kill her but would renege for a price. It said, in part, “Am very sorry for you my friend, is a pity that this is how your life is going to end as soon as you don’t comply. … I don’t have any business with you, my duty as I am mailing you now is just to KILL/ASSASINATE you and I have to do it as I have already been paid for that.” It continued, “Get back to me now if you are ready to pay some fees to spare your life, If you are not ready for my help, then I will carry on with my job straight-up.” The woman, Beverly Dew, who works in advertising sales at the Post-Dispatch, said she almost deleted the message before reading it.
“My first response was just to hit the reply button and say, ‘You’re sick,'” she said Thursday. The sender did not respond to a reporter’s questions sent to the electronic address. A copy was forwarded to the FBI, where Special Agent Zachary Lowe said warnings about the scam date to 2006, and such e-mails first showed up here six to eight months ago. Lowe said that the early targets were white-collar workers, like doctors and lawyers, whose e-mail addresses were easy to find in ads or directories and who might have more reason to worry that the threat was real. The messages come from overseas, he said, with at least one traced to Eastern Europe.
I still get email from the Nigerian scammers from time to time. I don’t expect to see much action against this form of “terrorism”.
I’ve gotten just about everything but the death threats.
Just yesterday I got a phishing scam for my Wells Fargo Banking Account. First Email was very close to official looking except for very minor punctuation spacing and some unusual syntax–but close enough.
The email wanted me to confirm my account due to low activity or the account would be closed. Clicking on the link brought me to a page whose address was not wells fargo variation as had been the first email.
Wells Fargo confirmed it was bogus and I forwarded the phishing email to their fraud division. I’m sure its from overseas but I was impressed with the first email. I can see newbies falling for it. Why they don’t have their grammar exactly correct is beyond me. Almost makes me want to try it, except I wouldn’t know what to do with the money?
i rarely get spam……….
I usually just ask for a pair of panties
“I’ve been paid to kill you…” Pretty creative – I like it. If ya gotta spam, it might as well be entertaining.
Actually, perhaps this will have a good side. Those feeble minded enough to believe it will be scared off the net for good. :).
All you need is a TOR connection, a “burner” email account, and a really nice reply, like, “Really? My brother has been paid to off you after the job so no witnesses. Hope you live to collect!
What, maybe 10 minutes? Reminds me of Tom Mabe (qv.)
I had one or two of these sent to me last year. After reading the first one I only figured that they got the wrong barovelli, for no way could I pay the ransom.
delete and move on.
I was actually assinated..umm, yeah..assinated !
John gets no spam… so I imagine he’d take a death threat far more seriously than us spam getting folks 🙂
Death threat???
Go ahead, kill me and I’ll never talk to you again. My fat, mustachioed, ugly sister might, but I won’t.
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