‘Hitman’ Scam Targeting Residents of Torrance, Caution Police

Police in Torrance (California, USA) of late cautioned about certain "hitman" scam moving across the Internet while blackmailing Internauts to pay a large amount of money to the scammers or get killed in the latter's hands, thus published dailybreeze.com dated December 31, 2014.

According to one police notification issued for inhabitants, the scam had taken place worldwide and usually involved scam e-mails, however, had as well emerged within text messages.

Police said that the electronic mail alternatively text writer described himself as a killer on hire whose job was to take the life of the text/e-mail recipient. But, as given in the message, the victim could be spared from murder provided he paid a ransom to the e-mail/text sender. The writer then stated that he was keeping watch over the victim who shouldn't inform the police, Torrance cops indicated. Dailybreeze.com reported this.

The e-mails as well as text messages were being distributed arbitrarily and nobody must answer, according to Police.

Answering the e-mail/text would indicate to the scammers the recipient's account was valid following which they might ask for more money through added threats.

Disturbingly, there was another name to the aforementioned killer scam viz. 'extortion scam,' according to a remark by security analysts who had examined the latest fraudulent messages. By crafting a not so delicate modification of a few separate e-mail scams that fooled recipients into giving away personal information else money, the extortion fraud had emerged.

The fraudulent e-mails can have different contents or varied styles, while mostly include broken English and incorrect spellings. But, all the e-mails tell the same thing i.e. hand over payment to the scammer else face the danger of getting murdered.

These scams can be described as creators of awareness building regarding online fraud, so people must safeguard their private data while erase unsolicited spam mails without even opening them as the best measure for maintaining safety, security experts explain.

They must deploy the most recent and trustworthy anti-spam computer program for preventing such e-mails from landing inside their inbox and always utilize high quality firewall and spam filter, the experts add.

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