Scam Alert. (Credit: CrimewatchPA)
The Bucks County Crimes Against Older Adults Task Force is warning residents of a prevalent online extortion scam they may find in their email inbox, involving claims that the user was caught visiting adult content websites and demands cryptocurrency as blackmail.
Authorities said threatening emails are being sent nationwide, claiming that they have caught the recipient, or the computer user, visiting adult content websites and that they have compromising pictures taken from their device's camera.
Police said the email also includes the recipient’s phone number and address.
“However, don’t panic and rest assured, this is 100% a scam and a fraudulent e-mail which should not be interacted with or responded to in any way,” said Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn. “The e-mail then threatens to release the compromising photos and videos they claim to have captured from your webcam if you don’t immediately comply and deposit a sum of money to a specific Bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet address.”
Police said to report these scam messages as spam or junk to the e-mail provider, and then delete it.
Users can also report it to the FTC through their fraud reporting form at: www.reportfraud.ftc.gov or if you have fallen victim to this scam, report it to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center through www.ic3.gov.
According to the FBI 2023 Crime Report, these types of “extortion” scams were reported more than 48,000 times, according to the District Attorney. These extortion scams can take various forms, from an email claiming possession of compromising photos or videos collected through a consumer’s webcam to “romance scams” where a lonely consumer connects to the scam artist through a dating site and is then guilted, pressured, or simply extorted into sending money to the scam artist for as long as they can keep them on the hook, authorities said.
“In today's information age, it's easy to find anyone's name, address, and email online. If your email provider has a ‘report scam’ function or button in your inbox, you can use it and the email will be removed automatically for the email provider to investigate in conjunction with the Federal Trade Commission, who now works directly with Internet Service Providers to weed out these scams, and help lessen the amount of these pervasive fraudulent e-mails from making their way to your inbox,” Schorn said.
Authorities said the scam artists buy large amounts of data on the dark web, which may be compromised with data gathered over the years from various sources including data breaches, public records, and other scams where your data was compromised.
Authorities said that having a profile for a person to include their name, address, phone number, and e-mail address is not difficult for a scam artist to accomplish, but to the average person seeing this information combined and outlined in a threatening letter attached to an email can be very alarming to most consumers.
“This is exactly the response the scam artist is hoping for, to alarm you and in that reaction of fear and potential panic they hope you aren’t thinking clearly and will simply comply with their request to extort money or cryptocurrency from you to avoid any embarrassment,” Schorn said.
Police said recipients should not interact with the message in any way other than to report it as spam/junk and delete it from their inbox.
Below are a few red flags to help consumers recognize these fraudulent messages as well as some tips to protect yourself
Red flags:
Protect Yourself:
The Bucks County Crimes Against Older Adults Task Force can be found at www.buckscounty.gov/CrimesAgainstOlderAdults and its 24-Hour hotline is 1-800-490-8505.
The Task Force is comprised of:
