Pay to live: scammers spamming fake death threats in Switzerland

Spammers are actively disseminating fake emails with faux death threats. The Swiss National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) urges you to ignore them.

Fake hitmen are currently spreading fake murder threats via email in Switzerland.

“In the email, the hitman ‘ADAM X’ offers not to carry out the murder if a ransom is paid,” the NCSC alert on the latest incident reads.

“The sender’s aim is to intimidate the recipient and persuade them to make an ill-considered payment.”

Swiss authorities urge ignoring such threats.

“They are a hoax,” the NCSC assures.

Scammers in the country have been active recently, disseminating various types of lies. Last week, the NCSC received a higher-than-usual number of reports about recovery scams, in which people who have already fallen victim to investment fraud are targeted a second time. Scammers offer to help recover the lost money for a fee. They even pose as NCSC employees or other public institutions to gain credibility.

Previously, cybercrooks tried to scam people by pretending to be a debt collection agency, sending links that led to malware infection, or sending phishing text messages for allegedly unpaid parking fines with links to phishing websites.

NCSC receives over 1,000 cyber incident reports every week, most of which are fraud attempts and phishing scams. The watchdog recommends that users never make any payments or give remote access to their computers.

“If you have suffered financial loss, we recommend filing a criminal complaint with your local police station.”