Vancouver’s Amy Rhoads went to check her email this week and found a surprise: A death threat.
But worry not, said the threat’s author. Pay up and he’ll call off the hit.
Clearly, Rhoads said, it was a scam, but she gave the grifter some credit since it’s an angle she had never seen or heard of before.
Other grifters seem to try more mundane angles: Getting people to pay an advance to get the rest of some stowed-away cash; depositing and then wiring money from bad checks, or, as the Clark and Cowlitz county sheriff’s offices have been warning people about lately, sending threats of arrest on pain of a cash payment.
The email announced “I will be happy to put a bullet on your skull,” told her not to call the cops and that the would-be assassin’s men had been watching her.
But, the hitman or -woman said, it would all go away if she put up $10,000 to cancel the contract.
Rhoads let the police know, but thought other people might need a heads-up.
“It’s the goofiest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said.
It’s not an unheard-of strategy, Vancouver Police Department spokeswoman Kim Kapp said.
People might get oblique threats of death on pain of cash payment via social media or text messages, she said. It’s not a new scam either.
In 2007, the FBI commented on the scam, and recommended targets not respond.
“Replying to the emails just sends a signal to senders that they’ve reached a live account. It also escalates the intimidation,” the agency said.
In some instances where targets replied, the scammers started sprinkling in what personal information about the targets they had. However, a lot of that information is widely available, and is just used as a means to spook recipients into compliance.
“The extortion scam is a less subtle variation of some other email scams designed to trick recipients into turning over money or personal information,” the FBI said.
Either way, Kapp said, anyone who gets an email like Rhoads did can contact the police, at least to let the department know about it and file a simple report.
Kapp added anyone who receives a message like that, and is concerned someone really does want to hurt them, should contact police.
