Stamford Residents Are Targeted by Bitcoin Scammers

Five Stamford residents have received written threats demanding electronic payments of $5,000 or they or a relative will be killed, according to Stamford Police.

Within the past week, police have received five complaints from residents who received “extortion” letters via the U.S. Postal Service, police said Tuesday.

“In the letter it makes a death threat against the recipient, his/her family and family members if they don’t pay a fee of $5,000. It then requests that they open a Bitcoin account and wire the money to the Bitcoin address that is provided,” police said.

Bitcoin is a type of electronic currency that is exchanged through peer-to-peer networks. The coins are “mined” by having computers solve complex math problems.

“It’s a nationwide problem and we’ve been seeing it in the last week and a half,” said Lt. Diedrich Hohn. Hohn said the intended victims were families and businessmen and that he was unaware that any of them complied with the payment demands.

Hohn said it is nothing more than a scam.

“As convincing and threatening these letters are, they are all a scam by playing on your fears for your family’s safety in exchange for money. In these letters they have done research to find out your relatives names and then they place this into a form letter and mail them out to thousands of unsuspecting people,” police said. All of the letters were exactly the same except for the names and accounts on every letter.

“They are using the Internet for their research for names and placed them in a form letter,” Hohn said.

The letters received in Stamford bore postmarks of Austin, TX and Springfield, MO, according to Hohn.

Similarly, Farmington Police said this week that two residents in that city received similar letters.

Hohn said that if residents receive a letter, they should contact police immediately, and do not pay the money despite a disclaimer that if police are notified “immediate harm will come to you. Please ignore this and notify the Police Department.”

Hohn said Stamford investigators are working with the FBI and postal inspectors in an effort to determine the origin of the letters.

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