The crime of blackmail is nearly as old as the concept of shame itself. But while in the past it was necessary to actually give the intended mark some kind of taste of whatever dirt the would-be blackmailer possessed (a photo, name, hint at details, etc), the prevalence of email has made this unnecessary. Since it’s possible to send out tens or hundreds of thousands of emails for no more cost than sending one, scams of all kinds can rely on the law of very big numbers; no matter how absurd the claims, at least some of the recipients will be gullible enough to click on the link, send money to the imaginary Nigerian prince in hope of a big payoff, or swallow a would-be blackmailer’s claims of nonexistent “evidence” of wrongdoing. Since we’re deep in the Neo-Victorian Era the most terrifying and potentially destructive accusations are currently sexual ones; not a week passes that we don’t see someone’s career or entire life destroyed over revelations that the victim was a sex worker, or the release of nude pictures, or even evidence-free accusations of rape, sexual harassment, etc. So naturally, those who are easily-shamed (either due to personal hangups or very reasonable concern about jobs, relationships, etc) are most afraid of such revelations, even to the point where some silly writers consider “deepfake” porn a greater cause for concern than government actors using such technology to manufacture false evidence (eg, fake footage of a young black man whom the cops murdered drawing a gun on the murderer, etc). And since having “child porn” found or planted on one’s computer by “authorities” actually carries far greater penalties than actual child rape, and the Great Unwashed now use the term “pedophile” to describe even people viewing pictures of adults who may be a few months under the sacred Moment of Shazam, the stage is set for vultures to capitalize on the fear of habitual porn-surfers who worry that they may have accidentally viewed underage models at some point. And since porn-viewing is so ubiquitous, the current “I hacked your camera and recorded video of you masturbating to child porn” scam has proven quite profitable for the con artists.
It’s important to note that these spam-scams are purely scattershot; I sometimes get them myself despite the obvious absurdity of addressing such a communique to a high-profile whore (especially one who is quite frank about being disinterested in both porn and masturbation despite having no silly beliefs about either being bad or shameful). But recently I had one which actually followed up with a second threat-letter including stronger language, which might indicate they’re starting to change their tactics (probably due to declining levels of return from the marks). So I figured I’d share the follow-up as a public service; it’s from the email address aurea.wilhelm@bloodbath.ravelly.xyz and this is it verbatim, except that I’ve redacted the bitcoin address. Note the clever use of vague terminology like “the online forum” and “the groups” to avoid naming some site the mark never visits. I’d also share the first one, but I simply deleted it; the only reason I even noticed that this was a sequel was due to the fourth-grade text-talk spelling of “Nightmare” in the sending address.
WAKE UP maggiemcneill@earthlink.net!
Do you really think it was some kind of joke or that you can ignore me?
I can see what you are doing, pedo.
Stop SHOPPING and fucking around, your time is almost over.
Yea, I know what you were doing on Saturday. I am observing you.
Btw. nice car you have got there.. I wonder how it will look with big ‘PEDOPHILE’ stickers..
Because you think you are smarter and can disregard me, I am posting the 4 videos I recorded with you masturbating to kids right now. I will upload the videos I acquired along with some of your details to the online forum. I am sure they will love to see you in action, and you will soon discover what we do with pedophiles like you.
If you do not fund this bitcoin address with 5.000 USD by next Friday, i will contact your relatives and everybody on your contact lists and show them your pedophilia recordings.
The bitcoin price changed since I last contacted you, here are the new transfer details:
=====================================
Send:
0.49114836 BTC
to this Bitcoin address:
{redacted}
=====================================
If you want to save yourself – better act fast, because right now you are FUCKED. We will not leave you alone, and there are many people on the groups that will make your life feel really bad, you fucking pedophile.
N1ghTm4r3
Probably you’ve heard by now about this case: Pigs had a suspect with prominent facial tattoos, but no witness mentioned tattoos, so pigs erased tattoos from the mugshot. I guess they were counting on bullying the suspect into pleading guilty rather than going to court and having every witness say “No, I do not see the robber here.”
Jesus, my head is about to explode.
And I thought the occasional blackmail e-mails I received were bad. They are nothing compared to yours. Makes me wish we had one honest and upright LEO in this country to give this crap to, even if it was an NGO, like The Shadow or Doc Savage.
Maggie, have a great day and a better tomorrow.
I got one of those emails a few months ago. I don’t think I got the followup though. I don’t remember all the details, but yeah, they’re vague on the personal details but with a few random specifics thrown in that could apply if they’re lucky. Just enough to catch the gullible idiots. I think the only reason I read it was because it came through my work email which normally has great spam filters.
Interesting. I have not seen this new variant yet.Thanks for posting this. The old one also sometimes gave a password from an older breach (in my case unused for half a decade). This problem is made worse, of course, by the little fact that many people believe, with some justification, that they cannot trust the “authorities” with such a thing.
Incidentally, I am waiting for a widely-used version that does include an actual illegal picture. Since the lawmakers in many places have gone completely insane and saw fit to make possession _without_ intent an extreme crime as well, that would probably sent people into a real panic. I am not giving people ideas here, this has been discussed in expert circles. It also has been done small-scale before, I believe on Germany. The advice from the police was to delete the picture and to _not_ report this to them to avoid prosecution with an uncertain outcome. A completely insane state of affairs.
Follow the link reading “found or planted on one’s computer”.
Exactly the problem. Since they could not accuse anybody without a legal reason, they have made sure that they can accuse everybody legally and find them guilty too. The typical approach of fanatics. Reminds me of all those “witch tests” used for pretty much the same purpose.
Also makes it nicely clear what the actual main purpose of “The Law” actually is.
Hm, I don’t seem to get those emails … at least not yet.
But I do hear & read a lot about “evidence-free accusations of rape, sexual harassment, etc.” including this piece in Reason showing how #MeToo has morphed into sexual McCarthyism.
As Celos pointed out, they’re tied to passwords from some old data breach; the first one sent to me mentioned an old password I used to use in the oughts, before I started this blog.
Same parts of the user lists from these old data breaches contain email-addresses with the passwords. These extortion messages only get sent to email addresses in there. Mine was from the Yahoo data breach in 2013 or 2014.
Just got a threat to shut me out of my computer if I don’t pay $1400 equivalent in Bitcoin. I have never been happier that my home computer is broken and I am using the Public Library’s until it is fixed.
Apparently something like one in 10’000 people in the western world does pay this type of criminal at least once. With a global Internet that seems to be enough to make this somewhat profitable.
The threat is basically always empty, with the one exception of encryption Trojans. But there the damage has already happened at extortion time and there is a high probability that you will _not_ get your data back even if you pay. Some of these Trojans just overwrite your data with random trash and there is no way to recover anything.