Hitman E-mail Scam Reemerges With New Excuse

Investigators at Marion County (Oregon, USA) have engaged in bringing a halt to an e-mail scam that has hit the country. The National White Collar Crime Center has said that it is receiving a huge number of complaints about e-mails apparently from a 'hitman.'

The weird e-mails appear to have come from a group of Islamists who threatens to kill the person receiving the e-mail. However, the death could be avoided if the recipient send money through wire transfer to a given address in Great Britain, the message claims. Meanwhile, the Crime Center has till now got 150 reports from those receiving the fraudulent e-mails.

Craig Butterworth, Media Specialist at the National White Collar Crime Center, says that initially the e-mail sender claimed that his group had received payment to kill the recipient. Now he claims that they will assassinate the recipient as well as his family unless he complies. People all over the country are getting the scary e-mail apparently from someone representing the 'Ishmael Ghost Islamic Group,' which has set itself to kill the recipient, as reported by TMCNet on July 4, 2009.

Describing the e-mail, Butterworth said it is clearly another edition of the 'killer man' scam, which started during 2005-06. The e-mail posed as a threat message from some Mexican killer who apparently had been paid for killing the recipient, but he would not commit the murder if he got $20,000 from the recipient.

The latest scam e-mail complains to the recipient that he had insulted a member of the Islamic Group; therefore, this member has now ordered for the recipient's assassination. The e-mail then threatens that if the recipient does not comply with the requirements, every week for three weeks, one member of his family would be killed until the recipient himself is dead.

Besides, the e-mail states that the Group's member knew a person of the recipient's family and he pleaded to spare the recipient's life provided, he sent the Group $800.

Similarly, during the end week of June 2009, USA's Colorado Springs Police reported that many local inhabitants received threat e-mails asking for $70,000 in exchange for their lives.

Related article: Hitman Scam E-mail makes place in U-M Inboxes

» SPAMfighter News - 7/22/2009