Is That a Threat?

When I picked up my wife from work the other day, I asked her how her day was.

"I started with a death threat," she said, rather blandly I thought considering the news.

She had received an email from an unknown source. It came to her work email. It purported to be from someone who did dirty deeds for money, and who claimed he had a client that hired him to "splash your visage with sourness". It went on to say something like, "many hurt, long time". Although we joked about sour visages, it sounds like a threat to throw acid in her face, which is not funny.

We figured it was probably a new kind of Internet scam, like the Nigerian prince who needs you to send him some money so he can get his huge fortune out of the country to share with you. New to us, anyway. I texted a friend in the FBI, who, it turns out, is now the supervisor for the FBI call center, or some such thing, and he has dealt with such emails on a weekly basis.

But it is an actual threat in the text. The writer says he will carry out his assigned task, or rather send his man to do so, unless we pay him, in Bitcoin, within 24 hours. If we pay, he will not only remain inactive (his words), but send us what information he has about the client who hired him.

This seems like a nasty enough threat to provoke some kind of response. Someone should track down people making that kind of threat against people. I don't know what it would take. The IT guy where my wife works said the origin of the email was a pottery studio in Russia. Maybe I should email Putin and ask him to prosecute the perpetrators. My worry would be that trying to contact Putin would make people think I supported the current American administration. And that Putin might send someone to carry out the original threat for saying means things about Russian thugs. Or maybe Putin would just use the information to recruit for his own purposes.

My FBI friend did not suggest any follow up on our part. Mostly we talked about getting old, and his approaching retirement, as FBI agents are expected to retire at 57. He says he doesn't know what to do after her retires. I doubt he would have trouble finding employment if he wanted it. I also doubt he would need to work to get by. I know something of the starting salary for FBI agents, and the structure of their retirement plan.

Still, it was a little unnerving to see the actual email with an actual threat against my wife. So I support more allocations of funds for cyber security in this country, at all levels. I'd like to see government research and development to make all cyber interactions in this country safe, including our elections. Too bad the current administration owes its election victory to outside interference.