Killer E-mails

Just one more before my “lunch” ends…. still trying to catch up. Anyway, a recent article highlights a real low point in spam. This is even worse than the Nigerian scams (which actually resulted in several real-word deaths). Anyway, the jist of it is as follows:

The emails claim that the recipient has been stalked by a hired assassin for 10 days, but that the hitman is prepared to drop the contract if he is paid a total of $80,000. Upon receiving an initial advance payment of $20,000 the hitman claims that he will produce taped evidence of the contract to kill the reader of the email.

Frightening. Even it is spam. Of course, this is nothing more than old-fashioned extortion, gone high tech. That being said, for me, it seems to have crossed a line that most cyber-criminals had not yet crossed until know – actually threatening physical harm to get paid.