Warning: Scammers using public images of people's homes and other personal info to extort them

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) --- Consumer protection officials are warning about a new scam targeting people for extortion by sending threatening letters through email.

Officials say it's happening across the country and may have just hit Wisconsin as well.

What's unique about this scam is that personal information is used against you to incite fear, to trick you into sending money.

"Scammers always work on emotion," said Jim Temmer, president at Wisconsin's Better Business Bureau. Temmer says all the scammers want is cash. "These are extortion scams, one way or another," he said.

The way it works is that you get an email containing a threatening note. It includes your name, address, phone number and even a photo of your home via Google street image.

Temmer says it’s a common scheme. "This one is about where you live – there's sextortion out there too, where you'll get an email that says, 'oh, we know you visited these porn sites' or 'we activated your web cam and we've got these pictures of you, and we're going to send it to everybody you know unless you pay us money,'" said Temmer.

The ransom demand is usually in the thousands and in this case, the scammer specifically requests Bitcoin to "wipe the slate clean."

"This is happening thousands of times a day," said Dave Schroeder, cyber security expert at UW-Madison.

He says the scammers are usually not even in the U.S. and get your personal information through public records and the dark web via data breaches. "This example of adding a personal touch to these extortion attempts is just the latest in this cat and mouse game," said Schroeder.

The best thing to do if you receive one of these emails is to ignore it. "They can send out 10,000 messages and if they get one person to respond and are able to scam them out of their money, then it's worthwhile for them," said Schroeder.

Experts say never make any payments to the email sender and report the email. The BBB tracks scams like this through its Scam Tracker.

Temmer is encouraging people to use it to report this, or any scam, and also learn more about scams, when, and where they are happening.