In the evilness scale, I would have to rank this one five stars. I think I was the first to come up with this idea but I wasn’t stupid enough to actually try it. The plan is to extort money from the big Google Whores by threatening to get their AdSense account banned if they don’t pay. Markus Frind of Plenty Of Fish received the following extortion email.
This is a warning and if you don’t pay attention to it you will suffer from bad turns. All your income is through Google Adsense and if you do not cooperate with us we will stop this income source. We would like you to pay us the total amount of USD 5000 each month. This small amount could be considered as nothing compared to your earnings from Adsense. If you do not pay this amount we will have to close your account by the help of special robots and …! I am not happy to do this but I have to as there is no way out of it and I trust if you were me you would also have to do the same. I am an inventor and I have recently innovated a new design which will be accepted by scientific societies only if I can present a model in advance; and making the model takes money. They will register my new design only after they have checked all aspects of the same. My theory is changing the power into energy. If I succeed many big problems will be solved. All my design specification could be viewed in the following web log:
magnetic-machine.blogspot dot com
The magnets will be bought in installments and the amount you pay is to be paid monthly for the same. After the registration of my design, the entire amount which I received from you will be paid back.
If you collaborate with me, you have helped to the science. And if not, I will have to close your Google Adsense account. I seek your help for the sake of the Science and if you are not prepared to collaborate I will have to close your Google Adsense account
Waiting for your reply…..
Shoemoney received the same extortion email but the extortionist only asked him for $200 per month. Personally, I would have demanded 50% of their incomes! 
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Lol, so what were the sites responses?
Tell google sharpish I would think
he should have said KMA lol…those people should be send to google and they will take care of it lol
Its called as new generating of phishing.Security patches has left them with no other things but email or give them a false site asking for details.
if you are smart enough u will never fall in trouble they just need to be educated
That’s just stupid.
Yup, but its a real problem, especially for smaller sites who get accused of using bots… a big earning site would be able to explain things away a lot more easily than a small one as google would itself want to protect its revenue
There is no relation to ‘bots’ anywhere in this scenario.
Yeah, that’s the funniest e-mail I’ve read in a long time. I feel bad for the suckers who gave in.
*looks around*
*hides*
john you should pay half cause if it wasn’t for your “google whores” post they wouldn’t know exactly who some of the top earners were!
What a wierdo, I had wondered when this would start happening, ive heard of a few people ‘warnded’ by google about using bots they knew nothing about
Sounds like a Nigerian letter scam.
As I was reading it, I was trying to decide if it
was from Nigeria or Russia.
But the really funny part is how he tries to make it a “loan” that is for the betterment of science, as if that justifies blackmail.
Im betting that the website given is an innocent victim. Who would be dumb enough to give a real website?
Nigerian bots.
Lol
Yeah not surprising. I know a guy that got banned from Adsense, but that is because he had all of his friends click his adsense banners every day for over a week lol… but surely Google would not shut you down for something like this. And I love the level of intelligence in the email… “you have helped to the science”. lol
Yea.. And besides the point, I see no benefits for the person if he does ‘manage’ to shut the adsense account. Who gains? No one.
Its primitive blackmail, not a cunning master plan
In a crude way, you can call it a threat as well.
I agree that…new age of getting ppl is pharming…lol get them to a site which looks like google….its over for them
Its absolutely mad, mental health issues me thinks
how much can i get from john chow ? =p
None, cause John is not ‘falling’ for it.
Maybe he wrote it
Definitely a completely ignorant person who wrote the threat.. And, know something about blogging.
I think John suggested 50% is a good number.
Have an awesome day!
Dan
Make him do the dead parrot sketch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvyrzQldOKE
Many people seems to have received this ‘threat’ too. Seems like the person is making use of the contact form to send those mails too.
What do you mean, just using contact forms on sites?
I wonder if the lunatic posted his address to send the money too,
I still cant get my head around the magnets thing, WTF
The contact form that you put on your site for your readers to contact you, without having to place your real email on the hook.
seems like the nigerian mail scam i received.
Greatest Self Help Site For Free.
losers doing this kind of tactics!
Yea indeed. He could have spend some better quality time at, erhmm.. his ‘scientific’ research.
John, I hardly think this is worth five evil stars. To me, your evil has a certain level of elegance to it. More of a using the rules to your greatest possible advantage.
That ploy is just weak thuggery. 2 stars at best
seriously, would anybody lose a moments sleep over this?
I saw this on Shoe’s site. That’s so ridiculous. Robots? I bet they all have little John Chow heads.
I covered this topic yesterday, no worries!
Oh, I forgot, only an idiot could send an email like that.
An idiot?!?!? I resent that, Alex!
lol derrich that was funny
lol
That was some ‘smart’ idiot..
What would have been great is if he took him up on the offer, got his bank account and nailed his ass.
Yea. Have you heard of some internet clubs that focus on scamming the scammers? That’s some payback for them.
Now that is evil, although it looks too kooky to actually work. Extorting money to build a magnetic machine that will solve the worlds problems?
A much better way is to send an invoice claiming they owe you money for some service eg. advertising in some obscure publication, and then attach the threats to that. Chances are, many businesses would end up paying rather than sift through thousands of documents trying to figure out if they actually did order the service or not.
lol.. maybe what he meant was ‘magnetic therapy’?
From magnetic-machine.blogspot.com
“this method can be used in cars and to produce electricity and it stops global warming, polution poverty and drought
At first glance, my designs might look to be against the first and the second laws of physics.”
What a kook!
markk, the guy has “balls of steel”. It’s allways possible to trace an email like that. It can be very hard, but federal digital police, have the tools to that. This guy is a joker, but whow knows?? maybe someone pays him something
(like a cruise to the jail)
That is if someone is willing to spend some time, effort and money to go after him. Since no harm has been done as yet, I doubt anyone will..
Damn, that’s rough. I’d definitely be reporting that to Google and warning others.
Others have already jumped ship in reporting.
Reporting’s all fine and dandy, but this amounts to a scam. While it seems like everyone should know about most of the scams out there, people continue to get trapped by them. Sadly, this will continue until it ceases to be profitable for the scammers at which point they’ll move on to the next scam.
Quite frankly since it’s extortion which is illegal in my country, I’d report it to authorities as well as letting Google know.
The targets of the scammers are the more prominent bloggers, it seems. That is a dumb move, since they are definitely smarter. They picked a wrong move.
As if they can really stop others from using Google AdSense. Google isn’t that stupid to stop their income source too.
Has anyone had a look at the actual website he was promoting in the email (not so sure it was a good idea to post his URL in your post John – although it was good for a laugh) … the technical drawings are particularly impressive!
I don’t think this guy will be able to close the accounts of big AdSense publishers like Plenty Of Fish… these guys probably have a good relationship with Google and will be able to explain the situation.
Online mafia!
Thanks John for the correction.
There’s nothing original about blackmail – I’m sure this is one of the oldest professions.
that is one of the stupidest and annoying emails i think i’ve ever read