New Bitcoin Racket Threatens to Use Hitmen on Victims

[sirty143]

An old type of extortion tactic gets a new lease on life as victims are threatened with assassination if they do not send Bitcoin.

Threatening people with assassination in a place that offers as much anonymity as the internet does is nothing new, but this time, the extortionist is demanding Bitcoin.

New emails first spotted by BleepingComputer contain a message telling victims to pony up $4,000 in the cryptocurrency. In broken English, the extortionist explains that he runs a website on the dark web that offers services that include assassination, and that the victim was a target for one of his clients.

He then explains that he wants to “offer” the victim the opportunity to end this deal if he receives a $4,000 payment in Bitcoin.

Cryptovest looked at the extortionist’s wallet address and found exactly zero BTC have been paid so far. It’s been more than 24 hours since the email in the screenshot was sent.

This particular extortion racket bears a striking resemblance to the Bitcoin bomb threat emails sent out about a week ago. The following aspects are shared between the two incidents:

  There is a threat of violent action.
  The sum demanded is a specific amount of dollars in Bitcoin, not a specific amount of BTC.
  There is a promise to halt the violent action upon receiving payment.
  The author of the email uses an alias that differs from the name in the email. The bomber
    used the name Clair James, but the email address before the “@” symbol read “Frank.” This extortionist uses the name Justine
    Dibenedetto, but the email address begins with “John.” Both of the names used in the email addresses themselves are typical
    anglophonic names.
  Both emails provide a precise time limit upon which funds must be sent to the would-be attacker. The bomber gave victims 24 hours. The extortionist, 38.
  Both authors use a similar style of broken English.
  The subjects are vague.

The only clear differences between the two are the destination wallet address used and the fact that the bomber separated paragraphs more consistently than the extortionist.

Cryptovest looked at the bomber’s wallet address and found one transaction of 0.000007 BTC, which is worth two cents today. This may have been the result of a transaction fee.

The similarity between these two incidents indicates that this new attack may have been inspired by the bomb threat.


Source:  CRYPTOVEST

[MVT$]

After scammers/fraudsters riding on the popularity of Bitcoin, now we see another group doing the same.

[TripleVodka]

This will be make Bitcoin's reputation gonna be more bad and the price will be drop again, but wait? Anyone believe with this news? How we can believe it?
As long naughty peoples or groups share fake news or bad news like this, that will be influence bitcoin reputation.
But, have you thinking twice about this problem?
When bitcoin not exist or bitcoin isn't created, there is no illegal transactions? They using money to make a payment, so I think that isn't just because bitcoin, many other factors behind it

[alfatih99]

it's a very sadistic seizure, and I think we are to avoid something like that. It's better that we put the bitcoin that we have in some of the wallets so that it is not visible to the role holders.

[PRIBO247]

The rabble keeps crawling out! Scammers are no longer news so now its hitmen through bitcoin? Smh. By this they are just trying to scare people off of bitcoin and collapse the price again.