Scam contract killer email on the loose
Email demands $80,000 (£52,960)
A new spam campaign purporting to come from a professional hitman is attempting to frighten recipients into parting with cash.
The email says the recipient has been stalked by a hired assassin for 10 days by a hitman but says he is prepared to drop the contract if he is paid $80,000 (£52,960).
Upon receiving an initial advance payment of $20,000 (£13,240) the hitman claims that he will produce taped evidence of the contract to kill the email recipient.
According to vendor Sophos, the email, which starts with a cheery greeting of 'Good day' and can have a subject line of 'Read this to be safe and a new life in this new year', include the following warning:
'Do not contact the police or FBI or try to send a copy of this to them, because if you do i will know, and might be pushed to do what i have being paid to do, beside, this is the first time I turned out to be a betrayer in my job.'
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos said: 'This is surely one of the sickest phishes yet seen - the intention of this email is quite clearly to frighten the recipient into coughing up a substantial amount of money or, at the very least, their bank account details.'
'It may be hugely unnerving to receive such threats, but the only way to stop the distribution of these messages is for users to stop responding,' said Cluley.
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