Autistic Schoolboy Kills Himself Following Receipt of Bogus Ransom E-mail

Joseph Edwards a schoolboy, 17-years-old, who was autistic, hanged himself following receipt of one fake "police" e-mail that blamed him for viewing illegitimate websites and for which he required paying 100 pounds as fine, reported mirror.co.uk dated January 22, 2015. Joseph got victimized during August 2014.

Evidently, Joseph became vulnerable to trusting the fake e-mail possibly due to being handicapped and therefore acted so harshly in his family residence within Windsor, Berkshire, England.

Ever-since the incident, his mother Jacqueline ran a campaign for increasing awareness among children about perils following online scams.

The incident involved a spam mail to Joseph masquerading as Cheshire Cops message that stated that he was accessing unlawful websites containing offensive pictures and that he must pay money hugely for eschewing action by officers. And even though Joseph was a resident of Berkshire that Thames Valley Cops served, he got defrauded.

Cops at the scene confiscated the teen's suicide note in addition to his laptop.

According to Coroner Michael Burgess, an examination of the boy's PC seemingly showed certain kind of fraud being run on the device; reported telegraph.co.uk, January 22, 2015.

Joseph, as per the police, had mistakenly hit on the URL that followed onto one shoddy attempt at making threat and demanding money.

Peter Wall Detective Sergeant during investigation of the complex Internet fraud stated that it was extremely hard for tracking the people behind the operation; however, its origin was some foreign country. Dailymail.co.uk reported this, January 22, 2015.

When the teenager was put through post-mortem investigation, it was found that suffocation was the cause of his death following hanging.

On passing away of Joseph, a web-page on Facebook was created under the heading "Fake Police E-mail Scam in Memory of Joseph Edwards."

The web-page described itself as a plea to have increased efforts of penalization vis-à-vis such websites as also of prosecution of everyone behind them.

Further, it was for increasing awareness about the perils such websites thrust towards both kids and adults along with several others who might become victims of the kind of extortion.

Additionally it stated that more required being done for stopping the crime.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/2/2015