Australians Receive SMS Death Threats 192
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 killerking247@yahoo.com. 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.
Australians Receive SMS Death Threats (Score:5, Informative)
This is a fairly common scam usually received by e-mail. Lot of examples on www.419-eater.com where these types of scammers are known as hitlads.
Re:Common hired killer scam. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Seems a very muted response (Score:5, Informative)
Back during the colonial days and original formation of the states, this was true. But once the states were formed, they were given limited independence to create their own laws (which had to be approved by the Crown at the time, such as with South Australia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australia_Act_1834 [wikipedia.org] )
Full Independence was granted years later, and we now make our own laws as we see fit. Some of them logical, some of them even more fucked up than ever.
Re:Seems a very muted response (Score:5, Informative)
Nowadays, Australian law is based on what the USA wants.
cheers,