MPD - Death Threatening Spam E-mails Associate with ‘Extortion Scams’

According to reports obtained from Memphis, Tennessee (TN, USA), people are receiving "Extortion E-mails" which are part of online scams.

Dennis Toll, Lieutenant at the MPD (Memphis Police Department), states that people who receive these e-mails should at the very outset report them to the police, as reported by myfoxmemphis on July 10, 2009.

Toll further states that seek help from the police if one gets an e-mail that says - someone has been paid $50,000 to kill the recipient and it is some friend of the recipient who has made this payment.

It is learnt that a second e-mail follows the first that gives the instructions about where and through which company the recipient send the money.

The idea behind sending of these frightening e-mails is to make money, said Toll. As a matter of fact, these messages are totally false. Toll even points out certain hints that users must seek if they get these kinds of e-mails.

The first is that these e-mails are uninvited messages that do not use the recipient's name to address him. Online scammers or phishers who operate such scams involving extortion e-mails dispatch bulk spam or junk e-mails in anticipation that someone would become convinced and take the lure.

The second clue relates to grammatical errors that clearly distinguish the e-mails as fraudulent.

Tolls adds that while the e-mail sender talks of having closely followed the recipient for ten days, in reality the sender is at a pretty far off distance, normally in some West African country.

Toll further adds that e-mail recipients need to know that senders of these e-mails obtain potential victims' e-mail IDs randomly via some software. And if recipients reply back, the scammers only succeed in getting to know more about them.

Hence, to collect more details regarding online scams, to know ways of protecting personal identity as well as money, or to formally lodge a complaint, people can visit the IC3 (Internet Crime Complaint Center) at www.ic3.gov.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/30/2009