A scammer writes:

From: Ernesto Tichenor
city_add: Lisse
state_add: ZH
zip_add: 2162 Jh
country: Netherlands
comment: PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO SOMEONE IN YOUR COMPANY WHO IS ALLOWED TO MAKE IMPORTANT DECISIONS!

We have hacked your website [website URL redacted] and extracted your databases.

How did this happen?
Our team has found a vulnerability within your site that we were able to exploit. After finding the vulnerability we were able to get your database credentials and extract your entire database and move the information to an offshore server.

What does this mean?

We will systematically go through a series of steps of totally damaging your reputation. First your database will be leaked or sold to the highest bidder which they will use with whatever their intentions are. Next if there are e-mails found they will be e-mailed that their information has been sold or leaked and your site [URL redacted] was at fault thusly damaging your reputation and having angry customers/associates with whatever angry customers/associates do. Lastly any links that you have indexed in the search engines will be de-indexed based off of blackhat techniques that we used in the past to de-index our targets.

How do I stop this?

We are willing to refrain from destroying your site's reputation for a small fee. The current fee is $2000 USD in bitcoins (BTC).

Send the bitcoin to the following Bitcoin address (Copy and paste as it is case sensitive):

[bitcoin link redacted]

Once you have paid we will automatically get informed that it was your payment. Please note that you have to make payment within 5

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Dear "Ernesto,"

Even if your scam didn't smell like a scam from the moment you used my own comment page to scam me, the fact is that there are no customer records on the site in question, so you COULD randomly spam the entire universe with lies about me and my site, in the hopes that at least one of the people who open your spams is a customer or reader, but I wouldn't too much money on that.

That said, I AM grateful for you sending me your bitcoin link. I have a friend, the Exiled Nigerian Prince, who knows exactly what to do with such information. By now, you may have noticed that your bitcoin account is not just empty, it's gone quite negative. If you want to get your money back, please go to the Prince's contact page ( https://exilednigerianprince.com/enp.htm ) and enter the requested information, including a bank routing and account number. If you do so within the next 24 hours, the Prince assures me that he will refund your money, less a $2000 processing fee.

If you can't trust the Exiled Nigerian Prince, who can you trust?

Paul

A reader claiming to be from Austria writes:

Hello, I have been informed to contact you. The CIA has been doing intensive research for the past fifty years researching on what we call so called life. That information has been collected and presented for you here [Bitly link withheld] This has been the finding as of seventeen years ago as of today. Now governments and other large organizations have develop technology around these concepts for their own deceptive uses. Soon you will be contacted by other means for counter measures and the part that you play in all this. Please get this as soon as possible because there are powers that be to take down this information about this.
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Thank you for this dire and timely warning. What you don't know, however, is that my friend the Exiled Nigerian Prince has been monitoring those who monitor such things including the dark forces that have been monitoring your own electronic communications. Due to well-spent millions to parties we won't name, he has a certain amount of "pull" with these people. For the tidy sum of $4,000, the Prince can arrange to have you protected from both legal and illegal surveillance in the future, and have the information they have gathered so far sealed permanently.

To take advantage of this generous offer, please go to the Exiled Nigerian Prince's contact page ( https://creekdontrise.com/enp.htm ) and enter the requested information, including your bank routing code and account number. As soon as the $4000 has been withdrawn, you will personally be blocked from the kind of surveillance you have warned me about. You may learn other lessons as well, but I will leave that discussion for a future time.

- Paul