Several businesses in the US have been sent extortion letters demanding payment in Bitcoins.
The letters, headed with the unequivocal title “Notice of Extortion”, proceed to list all the “catastrophic and irreversible” things the recipient business can expect if they don’t pay up.
These include “negative online reviews”, “fraudulent delivery orders”, “telephone denial of service”, “vandalism” and “mercury contamination”, according to Krebs on Security.
The demand is for the victim to pay a “tribute price” of 1 Bitcoin, which amounts to over $500 at current trading prices, rising to 3 Bitcoins if it’s not paid by mid-August.
All the letters that have appeared online thus far appear to be targeting pizza delivery shops, with the extorters also including some helpful guidance on how to get started with the cryptocurrency.
The letters urge the victim to sign up to Bitcoin exchange Coinbase and send their money to a specific Bitcoin wallet, which is given in a QR code printed on the letter.
This is one of the first cryptocurrency-related scams that has crossed over into the offline world and shows that the criminal underground is increasingly prepared to exploit the anonymous aspect of Bitcoins and the like.
The extorters are unlikely to get anywhere with this latest tactic, however. As Krebs noted, the US Postal Service has a zero tolerance approach to such matters.
This is not the first time pizza parlours have been targeted in extortion scams, of course.
Earlier this month, a hacking group dubbed Rex Mundi demanded €30,000 ($40,880) from Dominos Pizza in France, claiming that if they didn’t receive the money they would release a vast cache of user data relating to over 600,000 pizza lovers.
The details included customer names, full address, phone number, email and even info on their favourite pizza toppings.