Greg's Corner

Don’t be intimidated by scammers’ threats of violence

In Illinois, a woman received a message on social media that appeared to be from a relative. The woman noticed that the account used to send the message wasn’t her relative’s actual account but one made to look like her relative’s. When the woman responded to the scammer asking them to leave her family alone the scammer started threatening her. The scammer said that if they weren’t paid money that they were going to hurt the family even going as far as to threaten a shooting.

The hacker responded saying “Tell her to pay me $300 dollars for her to get her page back. I’m going to do bad stuff to her soon.” That’s when she called the police. But the scammer threatened more. “Police can’t stop snipers,” they messaged. “You getting killed first.”

Unfortunately, these threats of violence have become just another tool in a scammer’s bag of tricks. This isn’t the first time where we discussed someone having their family threatened with violence from scammers. Last year, a man in Brooklyn, New York had his family threatened if he didn’t give scammers money. The scammers then sent him violent and graphic pictures while claiming to be from a criminal cartel. There’s also the virtual kidnapping scam where scammers will either claim to have kidnapped a loved one or pose as the kidnap victim to try to get money for a kidnapping that didn’t happen.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9bwYa1mN9U%5D

Scammers are hoping that by using threats of violence they can put their victims in such an emotional state that the victims will give in to the scammer’s demands. More often than not, the scammers are calling or messaging from overseas and have no way of carrying out these threats. If you receive a call or message from a scammer, your best option is to not engage with them. Even telling them to stop contacting you gives them information they can potentially use for future scams. If a scammer threatens you, don’t hesitate to contact police. If police can’t apprehend the scammer they can at least warn others in your community of the scam.