New e-mail scam: Pay up or get killed
The FBI is investigating a new scam aimed at extorting tens of thousands of dollars from wealthy professionals.
Wealthy professionals are being hit this week with a new e-mail extortion scam that’s set up to appear to be assassins who will murder the recipient if he or she doesn’t send them thousands of dollars.This new wave of e-mail extortion began at the beginning of the week, according to Don Jackson, a researcher at SecureWorks. The e-mails have an air of legitimacy because they come from valid e-mail accounts, instead of spoofed “from” addresses.
And if that isn’t enough to worry the people being extorted, if they reply to the e-mails, the scammer actually responds with personal information about the victim, according to SecureWorks. [Full story]