Spam Bomb Threat Demanding Bitcoin Ransom Payments

A new spam email extortion scam is making its way around the web, threatening businesses and schools nationwide saying that someone has planted bombs within the building and will be detonated unless a bitcoin ransom has been paid by the end of the day.

One variant of the email reads:

“I write you to inform you that my man has hidden the bomb (tronitrotoluene) in the building where your company is located. My mercenary built a bomb according to my instructions. It is compact and it is hidden very carefully, it is impossible to destroy the structure of the building by my bomb, but in the case of its detonation there will be many wounded people.

My mercenary is controlling the situation around the building. If he sees any strange activity or cops he will blow up the device.

I can call off my mercenary if you make a transfer. You pay me 20’000 usd in Bitcoin and explosive will not detonate, but do not try to fool me -I assure you that I have to call off my recruited person solely after 3 confirmations in blockchain.”

The Bitcoin address in each email seems to be different, and over 15,000 samples have been collected since 1PM EST. We have seen extortion campaigns in the past which used old email/password combinations in order to threaten the user into paying a Bitcoin ransom. Multiple companies in the U.S. have been evacuated based on receiving this email reviewing it as a legitimate threat.