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| Science & Technology |
| New internet scam has a jihadi twist |
| 2009-06-18 |
| A Seminole man received a threatening e-mail from an entity calling itself the Ishmael Ghost Islamic Group – and then he received an apology from a university in North Cyprus where the e-mail was generated. Philip von Rohr received the e-mail on June 10. The group described itself as "confirmed Islamic Hired killers and Suicide aids," and said members had been sent to assassinate the e-mail recipient and members of the email recipient's family. The e-mail is the generic sort in which the addressee isn't actually named. Von Rohr's name doesn't appear in the text. The e-mail author said von Rohr had offended a member of "our gang," and that the member had ordered the assassination "after he made sure he acquired every information about you and your family," according to a copy of the e-mail provided by von Rohr. It was when the member was presenting the group with the information that another member of the gang claimed he knew someone in the e-mail recipient's extended family. That member asked that the e-mail recipient be pardoned, and the group agreed he could if von Rohr sent $800 to a receiver in London. The money would purportedly be used to help Islamic expatriates move out of the United States. Von Rohr said he took the e-mail to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office where he said he was told by a receptionist that it was the latest scam out of Nigeria. He was then given a brochure on fraud recognition. He said he also filed a report with the FBI. The e-mail address from which the message was sent was Amir.Hedayat@emu.edu.tr. Von Rohr did a little research and found the emu stood for Eastern Mediterranean University, which is located in Famagusta, North Cyprus. Von Rohr complained. Then he received an apology from Gurol Ozkaya, the general secretary of the university. In e-mails sent to von Rohr, 50, and The Tampa Tribune, Ozkaya explained the problem. He said frequently the institution's 18,400 e-mail users receive spam requesting the user names and passwords of the e-mail users. In the most recent scheme, the e-mails asking for the user names and passwords had the extension, @emu.edu.tr, which is the same as the university's, Ozkaya wrote. Although the university warns the e-mail users about these frauds, four users thought the institution itself wanted the information and compromised their accounts by sending them along. Then, via the e-mail accounts of the four, the death threats were sent to other Internet users. The four had no idea this was going on, Ozkaya wrote. The university has suspended the four e-mail accounts that were compromised, he wrote. A Web page that was reported to be the hosting site of the threats has been suspended as well, Ozkaya wrote. The university is also making sure that its server does not allow any e-mail from the four addresses from which the credentials were sought, he said. In addition to von Rohr's, the university received three other complaints, Ozkaya wrote. In his apology, he wrote that he would have the institution's computer center issue yet another warning. "It was a scary thing," von Rohr said. "I pretty much 95 percent realized it was a hoax, but there was a little doubt and I felt I should talk to someone or report it." |
| Posted by:ryuge |