'Pay up or die': Thousands of Australians receive death threat text message - Jack VanGorden

Australian police publicly informed citizens of fake text messages and emails sent out stating that the individual had two days to send the spammer $5,000 or they would die. Detective Superintendent Bryan Hay tells Australians, "delete it immediately and don't panic, because that's what they prey upon."  The first messages were sent out Sunday to a mass amount of people. The message reads: "Sum1 paid me to kill you. Get spared, 48hrs to pay $5000. If you inform the police or anybody, death is promised." It then directs the recipient to contact them at a Yahoo email account. Hoaxes similar to this one have also been seen in Nigeria recently. Most of the threats were sent to senior citizens and others who aren't familiar with the Internet. Police note that this is organized crime and that the scammer(s) obviously had to have spent time in order to retrieve the contact information of all of the recipients. Hay is worried that the prosecutors will strike again if the hoax proves to be profitable. I'm sure that many scared civilians payed the $5,000, only to find out that they were being played. How unfortunate!!

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/23/tech/australia-death-threat-text-messages/index.html