The FBI says scam artists are putting a new twist on a death threat hoax.

The FBI says scam artists are putting a new twist on a death threat hoax.

In early December, the FBI warned of an e-mail scam where the sender said he'd been paid to kill you, but would let you live if you gave him thousands of dollars.

Now, there's a new e-mail going around, supposedly from the FBI in London.

It says police recently arrested someone for several murders in the U.S. and Britain, connected to the original e-mail.

Supposedly, the suspect was carrying information identifying you as the next victim.

The email asks you to respond in order to help with the investigation.

The FBI says, do not respond to these e-mails. Doing so could compromise your personal information, and open you up to identity theft.

Shirley Tyus of Columbia thought her ship had finally come in.

The former nurse’s aide was notified she’d won, incredibly, not one, but a fast succession of foreign lotteries. She was even mailed checks to cover fees required to collect her winnings.

“I thought I was blessed,” said Tyus, 54, who, because of a back injury, mainly baby-sits to support herself and four daughters still in college. A fifth graduated with honors last year in nursing.

But instead of receiving a blessing, Tyus faces disaster. The lotteries and the checks were all bogus.

She not only didn’t win big, she owes her bank thousands of dollars. Worse, she faces forgery charges that could send her to jail.

Her case reflects what some consumer experts fear is a change in how law enforcement seeks to stem rampant lottery fraud — going after the victims.

“It’s become a nightmare. I thought I was the victim,” Tyus told me as she supplied me with documentation of her story.

In October, the Boone County prosecutor charged Tyus with four felony counts of passing forged checks with intent to defraud Missouri Credit Union and Legend Automotive.

Tyus has yet to appear on the charges. But she disputes them all.

Prosecutors won’t discuss the case. But Columbia police Detective Steve Brown said authorities allege that while Tyus may have started out a victim, she saw a way to make easy money by passing large checks she knew were bad.

“You go from naive to knowing to criminal,” Brown said.

The only problem is Tyus didn’t make a dime.

Here’s a summary of what happened:

Tyus played FreeLotto on the Internet. Once in a while she even won a buck.

The Internet is apparently where the scam artists got hold of her name. In early August she got a letter saying she’d won the Australian Lottery.

In late August, she got a letter saying she’d won the British Bonanza 2000.

Each time, she was sent authentic looking checks — one was for $5,000 and another was for $2,996 — to cover the required fees to get her winnings into the country. She was directed to deposit the checks into her own bank, and then withdraw cash and wire the money to addresses in Houston and Canada, which she did, receipts show.

Credit union tellers didn’t bat an eye, despite the size and sources of the checks, one of which was written on an Oregon business, Mercer Industries, which makes windows. A firm spokesman told me lottery scammers sent copies of the company’s checks all over the country. “It was driving us nuts,” the spokesman said.

Tyus had already wired cash from the second lottery check when, one by one, the checks began to bounce. The Missouri Credit Union wanted its money back. But it was gone, and Tyus’ account was in the red.

Meanwhile, she was bombarded with more lottery-related checks, money orders and even U.S. Postal orders. Experts say Tyus was probably placed on a “suckers” list, which fraud experts say lottery scammers use to identify an easy mark.

In mid-September, Tyus saw a Legend Automotive ad for a “liquidation” sale. Payments started at $55 a month, and promotional discounts reduced them even more. She needed a car, and here was a bargain.

But a salesman told her that to qualify for the discounts she first had to be approved for a loan and make a down payment.

Tyus had just received four Travelers Express money orders and a Washington Mutual Bank check for $15,200, all from apparent lotteries. She pulled them out. “I asked the man, could I use them?” she said. “He took them and wouldn’t give them back. I never did sign them. I haven’t seen them since.”

Legend officials said they were immediately suspicious about the checks and gave them to police. Tyus never got a car. For one thing, she learned later, she didn’t qualify for a loan.

Experts say charges against lottery victims remain rare. But they are increasing, partly because frustrated police can’t stop the crooks behind the foreign scams raking in $1 billion a year. U.S. authorities lack jurisdiction in Canada, where dozens of lottery scams snag more than 4,000 U.S. victims a month.

“We’ve heard of people showing up at a check-cashing outlet and police also showing up,” said Susan Grant, vice president for public policy for the National Consumers League, which tracks frauds. But she argues that going after victims is out of proportion to their role in the international web of lottery scams.

“It’s putting more responsibility on victims than I think they deserve,” she said. “If you look at the whole situation, that they didn’t know, then prosecuting them is really inappropriate and doesn’t do anything for anyone.”

At best, Tyus was certainly terribly gullible. But it’s something else to believe she was part of an international lottery scam, forged checks in her kitchen or plotted to defraud anyone.

Prosecutors have to prove intent, so I asked Hal James, president and CEO of Missouri Credit Union, whether he believed Tyus set out to bilk his institution. “I don’t have a clue,” he said.

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Scam warning

If you unexpectedly get a check, it’s probably a scam.

If you cash the check, you will be liable if it bounces.

If it bounces, you may be sued or prosecuted.

If you must deposit the check, wait until you know it cleared to cash it.

If you have questions, ask your teller or a bank official.

To report a scam

Attorney general: Missouri: www.ago.mo.gov or (800) 392-8222; Kansas: www.ksag.org or (800) 432-2310

National Consumers League: www.nclcnet.org or (202) 835-3323

Federal Trade Commission: www.ftc.gov or (877) 382-4357

Phone Busters: www.phonebusters.com or (888) 495-8501

U.S. Postal Inspection Service: www.usps.com/postalinspectors

China is now the most infected country in the world

China is now the most infected country in the world and Asia contains half the world's infected computers, according to security company Prolexic.
The figures come from the company's Denial of Service (DDoS) Weather Report, which reports on the botnet activity around the globe from infected computers.
Countries in Asia account for five of the six most infected territories around the world, with the US in second place. The UK is tenth.
Net use in China is exploding. According to figures for 2006 released by the China Internet Networks Information Centre (CNNIC), the People's Republic now boasts 137 million Internet users, up 23.4 per cent year on year.
There are a number factors exacerbating the China problem, said Keith Laslop, President of Prolexic. One is 'because of the high use of pirate software, which Microsoft refuses to protect,' he said, which leaves systems open to virus infection.
Others include online criminals in China 'being able to exploit weak cybercrime legislation,' he said. 'If you commit a cybercrime in China, you face execution. If you do the same thing outside of China, the government won't bat an eyelid.'
Furthermore, the business landscape in China can be far from friendly. Laslop said that successful startups in China will soon come to the attention of the authorities, who are likely to move their own personnel in to key positions. 'It's more prudent to start an illegitimate business in China than a legitimate one.'
The other reason botnets are growing is because the DDoS attacks using them are successful. Laslop said that the infrastructure of web-facing systems are too often inadequate to cope with the threat. In particular, he noted that the Linux Apache MySQL PHP (LAMP) open-source systems are vulnerable when not configured properly.
'LAMP is not built defensively,' he said. 'It makes it a very easy target. You have to be very careful about how you configure it. You have burn some defensibility on to it. What it takes is planning, and right now there's no planning out there.'
The nature of attacks is also changing. They no longer rely on the brute force method of throwing masses of traffic at a server, but take a more targeted approach.
'They have moved from consumption type attacks to targeted http or application based attacks, trying to bring the CPU load to 100 per cent, maybe through an advanced search, or via registration pages,' he said. 'These new attacks appear legitimate. They sidestep firewalls, DDOS mitigation boxes, IDS services and so on.'
The report claims such attacks can use https to sidestep built in DDoS and IPS systems, and relatively low bandwidth - sub 50Mb - to succeed.
Paul Sop, CTO of Prolexic, said: 'A botnet is like a Swiss-army knife in that it has many tools which the attacker can implement. Attackers have started finding ways around many common DDoS defence systems and are adding those capabilities to their botnets. Their new tactics involve countermeasures of a previously unheard of level of sophistication. The challenge in stopping these attacks requires identifying, to a great level of detail, the usage patterns of normal users versus simulated bot users.