Australians Receive SMS Death Threats

beaverdownunder writes "Many Aussies across New South Wales and South Australia had a bit of a shock this morning when they received an SMS threatening them with assassination. Although somewhat varied, the messages have typically read, 'Someone paid me to kill you. If you want me to spare you, I'll give you two days to pay $5000. If you inform the police or anybody, you will die, I am monitoring you', and signed with the e-mail address [e-mail]. Police and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have warned that the messages are almost certainly fake, and that no dialogue should be entered into with scammers." I hope "almost certainly" is droll understatement.

Seems a very muted response

[Kupfernigk]

In England at least, judges have determined that SMS messages and Twitter have exactly the same status as any other written publication. Australian law is, I believe, based on English law. So: this would be a blackmail attempt. Five years' jail for every message seems about right. They need to find him and then he can spend the rest of his life locked in his parents' basement. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what will happen if they don't catch him.

Assumptions ...

[MSojka]

I hope "almost certainly" is droll understatement.

It certainly is. On the other hand, assume you can send SMSes in a way which is not traceable and comparatively cheap. Assume you want the entire police force of some place - say, New South Wales - to be too busy and way less effective. Assume you want to commit some other crime which would greatly benefit from the police force in that place being too busy chasing phantoms.

What would you do?

Re:Seems a very muted response

[Nursie]

Should be more than blackmail, this is harassment and a direct threat of harm, which I'm pretty sure is illegal in a large variety of ways.

The police *should* be chasing this one pretty hard as it will have scared the pants off more than a few people. They probably won't though.

Re:Almost certainly fake

[Nimloth]

If Australia is anything like Canada, I'm betting it's a mobile operator doing it. Here they charge 25c per incoming message out of bundle.
1. Write a script to send 100 000 death threats left and right.
2. ...
3. 25 000$ profit!