Police Caution About E-Mail Scam Threatening Death

Police in Victoria, Australia have cautioned people about a newly-circulating e-mail scam that threatens recipients with death in case they fail to remit money. 3AW News Talk published this on September 14, 2010.

Several individuals over the recent period reportedly complained to the E-Crime Squad about the e-mails that landed into their mailboxes.

Meanwhile, such e-mail frauds have been into existence since many years. While all of their texts have been different, they commonly appeared to be from killer men paid for taking the recipients' lives but not if they remitted a specified sum of money. Security researchers state that e-mail scams are plentiful, however, this one is somewhat biting, as it admonishes that the recipient will be killed.

States the scam e-mail, a killer has been hired for $80,000 so he may take the recipient's life except if the latter sends $10,000 to some Western Union account immediately. The e-mail further warns that the recipient certainly mustn't contact the police.

Note the security researchers that similar to numerous spam mails, the 'hitman' e-mails are frequently dispatched to addresses generated randomly alternatively those harvested from contact lists on e-mailers' accounts via malware. During such instances, the fraudsters never get to know if their messages have landed into active e-mail ids except when the recipients answer back.

However, if the e-mails are replied, they're typically followed with automatic e-mail replies, which contain fresh threats along with demands for more money.

Thus, John Manley Detective Inspector at the E-Crime Squad recommended that users mustn't respond to the above kind of e-mails since by doing that, the senders would know that they'd successfully landed into active accounts following which the intimidation could be further escalated. Heraldsun.com.au published this on September 14, 2010.

Additionally, Manley stated that in case the e-mails appeared aimed at the recipients, they mustn't be excessively anxious since fraudsters could include their potential preys' private information into those messages.

Say specialists, the only danger evolving out of the scams pertains to the money that the recipients of the threat e-mails may send. Thus they're advised not to reply while necessarily inform the police.

Related article: Police Arrests Six Suspects Associated With TJX Credit Scam

» SPAMfighter News - 9/23/2010