Killer Spam: Emailed "Hit-Man" Threats Should be Reported, Says FBI

By Anastacia Mott Austin

The subject line seems innocuous enough: "Greetings, read this for a safe and happy year."

But then it gets scary. A supposed hit-man warns that he is being paid great sums of money to terminate you, and then warns that he has been following you "for one week and three days." Unless you cough up a certain amount of money immediately to call off the hit, then he will be forced to kill you.

Then the email warns that the hit-man "will be coming to see you in your office or home [to] determine where you wish we meet, so not set any camera to cover us (sic) or set up any tape to record our conversation." After the first payment is received, the blackmailer will then supposedly send you the tape that has the request for your murder – and the identity of the person who requested it.

Though the choppy English and non-specific details should be a tip-off to most savvy email users, some have been shaken by the threats.

Peter McGlothin received a similar email to the one above, and even though he knew it was probably a scam, it still unnerved him. He felt a bit more jumpy than usual for several days. He told CNN that the email had told him to be home by 7:00pm each night, because the hired hit-man might come to his house to arrange the details of the payoff.

"I was home [one night] at about 7:15," McGlothin told reporters. "The doorbell rang, and I almost fell on the floor."

The so-named "hit-man scam" began showing up in inboxes last December, and shortly afterward a second scam email started circulating which stated it was from the FBI office in London. The email claimed that several people had been arrested for killing people in the U.S. and England, and that the email recipient was the next intended victim on a list. The instructions were to respond to the "FBI" to help them solve the crime.

The real FBI advises people to simply ignore such emails. On the FBI’s Internet website, the agency says that unless you respond to them, they will do you no harm. The email addresses targeted are likely from a professional-type database, i.e. people whom the scammers assume would have the money to make such payments.

"This is a hoax, so do yourself a favor and don’t respond," says special agent John Hambrick, head of the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3. The great majority of the mass mailings are generic and do not target anyone specifically…unless you respond to the email.

The FBI site recounts at least one case in which someone received one of the hit-man emails, and responded by threatening to contact authorities. The scammer wrote back, this time with an email containing personal information; the man’s marital status, work address, and his daughter’s full name.

Though this would surely be frightening, FBI agent Bill Shore, who oversees a computer crime team, said even this should not make you believe you’re in real danger. But the information is out there. "Personal information is widely available," stated Shore on the agency’s website warning. "Even if a person does not use the Internet or own a computer, they could still be the victim of a computer crime such as identity theft."

Cyber-crime has been responsible for identity theft, illegal credit card use, and a multitude of various extortion scams resulting in millions of dollars’ loss to consumers.

And while bad English skills and poor grammar are not considered crimes – though they should be – threatening someone’s life, even in an email, certainly is.

"Due to the threat of violence inherent in these extortion emails, if you receive an email that contains personally identifiable information that might differentiate your email form the general email spam campaign, we encourage you to contact the police," advises the FBI.

If you are the victim of any kind of Internet crime, you can contact the IC3 to report it.