Dozens of local residents have recently received this scam.
UPDATE: The Lakewood Police Department has been inundated with calls from residents fearing they may have been targeted.
Recipients of this letter are reminded to never send money to unverified parties.
TLS — This an absolutely inappropriate post!! Did you read it?? Contains disgusting Nivul peh. Take it down immediately
Also, this is scam is only pertinent to ppl engaged in inappropriate behavior. Someone who is not realizes automatically that this is a scam. So who are you so concerned to protect here? Maybe getting nervous and scammed like this is good thing for such ppl.
The information comes from a security breach, not from any inappropriate behavior as was claimed in the letter. Be careful with your assumptions .
You misunderstood what I wrote. Obviously the information comes from a security breach. Ppl who are not engaged in inappropriate behavior realize that this is a scam the same way someone who hasn’t robbed a bank would realize that an email blackmailing them to tell the cops that they robbed a bank is a scam.
This is not true. People are aware that it’s possible, for example, for the scammer to be lying about the behavior but to really have a deepfake video ready to go.
Set your laptop camera to off and same with microphone unless you are using it. Anyone can breach your computer – nothing to do with guarding the eyes….
I second this motion, or at least redact the the graphic details.
TLS – I see that you edited this post. thank you for your attn to this matter.
Agreed
Don’t take it down. I got such an email this morning and it scared me ( not that I’m worried that they have any personal content of mine but just that my phone has been hacked and what other information they had access to IE Social Security number credit card, etc. ) . I searched online and read that others got it too. That calmed me down knowing that it’s a mass scam . It important to be aware of so no one False spray to this and send money. Unfortunately, I know too many people that have fallen prey to such and other scams because of fear or guilt and felt terrible and degraded.
This is a well known scam that has been around for quite some time.
Anybody who’s email are is publicly available or should by data brokers is bound to get these every now and then.
Six times out of ten they’ll get stopped by your spam filter, but that’s not enough.
Sometimes they’ll go a step farther and make the email address they are sending it from to appear as though it is your own, and use that as “proof” that they have access to your device.
I would tell them to do it….
Lol, I got this email 8 years ago
I received a similar email but it was very real. It was so embarrassing what the videos showed
When I didn’t respond the Extortion thug sent 3 videos to my Rosh Yeshiva.
The R’Y called me in & showed me on his computer a video of when I was driving to Cleveland for a Simcha, being very tired I bought a coffee & without thinking put Non-Cholov Yisroel milk into it.
The 2nd video was when I was on vacation at the beach I bought a loaf of bread that was OU but NOT Pas Yisroel.
The final straw was a video of me Bentching very quickly (the baby was crying). The R”Y told me it was impossible I had the proper Kavanos at that speed
& threw me out.
My wife already works 65 hours a week to support our family. It breaks my heart sitting at home all day knowing my wife is at her 4th job. I really need to find a new Kollel (& Kollel check) ASAP.
If anyone knows of anything please let me know.
Looking back I probably should’ve paid the money to avoid having my deepest darkest secrets exposed to the world. I’m so ashamed & worry about my children’s Shidduchim.
You have been putting up a lot of these types of comments. Why?
I got this email and got nervous. BTW I have a flip phone. Thanks for posting
First of all he is a big liar. He thinks that because he is a Menuval that means everyone else is.
Probably he is sending this email to a thousand people and he is hoping that he will find a Menuval like himself amongst his 1000 emails.
Maybe Mr Google is saving the videos which is probably happening , but this guy
definitely is full of baloney . He is like playing the lottery hoping to catch a Menuval like himself.
The big search engines are probably saving all the websites, but this guy is a simple Ganav. He is lazy, doesn’t want to work and looking for a quick buck.
I got such an email. I immediately recognized it as a scam like all other scams, so I disregarded it like I do all scams, but I had an especially calm feeling knowing that it couldn’t be true, since I – like most frum Yidden – don’t engage in that that type of behavior, so there is nothing to worry about.
Just got it this morning
I also received this scam email yesterday. There’s nothing on my phone that can be used against me. It just scares me that he has my name, phone number and address…
Any time there is a scam similar to this one.
Even if you send the guy $, they will keep blackmailing you a million times until you reach 120 years old .
After you send them $, they will ask again and again like they are doing to the former president.
It’s irrelevant what this animal is writing, not clean sites or he is threatening to steal your ID or something else crazy.
Giving these thieves $ will never end.
They will keep asking and threatening until you go bankrupt.
got it yesterday and wasn’t nervous cuz I knew it was scam right away (had my old address and I don’t have smartphone) but is there a way to report it besides hitting spam and blocking sender in gmail?
Ew
Geshmak to get before Elul….. Help you get in the mood there is always someone watching that can play your actions back to you.
Will you be embarrassed by what your doing……..
this is such an obvious scam… i received this a number of years ago and i didn’t even have a smartphone…
Thanks TLS for posting this, i know many people would be scared by someone posting this information including their name, address and a screenshot of their house.
Even if the accusations in the email are incorrect, nevertheless it must be quite scary for many when someone seems to have all your personal info and is even threatening to come to your house.
Unfortunately some commenters have no concept of being Chas al Mamonam shel Yisrael, nor do they have empathy for their fellow Jews who would be scared just from people threatening to come to their house (where their children live!), I’m sure some people are terrified because of that.
And last but also least, they should have more empathy for people who may think that threat to expose them is valid as based on the flyers, shiurim, public announcements made about this over the years and huge efforts put in to prevent or help deal with this problem, a lot of their neighbors, friends and family may fall victim to this taavah.
The community has a tendency to ignore any problem they find distasteful, but like with any matter this method of dealing with it never helps.
I got it also report it to the police I went down this morning to file a report this is not acceptable and they should be stopped and punished it is disgusting and scary that they have all the information they literally got my email phone number address everyone who got this letter needs to go down to the police and file police report
I knew it was a scam, but it needs to be reported so they get caught and I also block them. I have been getting this for While and never open them before because I would thought I would get a virus for some reason yesterday, I opened it
Btw even if there’s no virus it’s better not to open it, because depending on how they set it up they can tell if it was opened, so best to send straight to spam
But this is not acceptable. I went down to the police station to report it it’s unbelievable. They had my name address phone number email it is unacceptable and we need to try to stop it
I also got the same letter, obviously ignored the scammers request for Bitcoin, but was we were asking everybody and their uncle if there is a concern that opening the pdf attachment could let the scammer spy on my computer. I wasn’t successful in getting any free scan to check my laptop….
Hi!
This is a really disgusting scam.
Asking a semi related question here since a lot of ppl are saying most of these emails are caught and sent to spam.
I find that I need to go through my spam folder since some non- spam emails routinely wind up there and I don’t want to delete them by mistake.
Some of the spam emails I get are really inappropriate. (Also lots and lots of scams mostly about shutting down accounts for non payment).
I never click on them, and I can’t think of any reason why I may have triggered getting sent these emails, but it’s kind of gross to have to look through all the subjects when I go through the folder to check for ‘real’ emails and delete the real spam. Any advice from the techies out there for getting less of these?
Got this scam two days ago and as much as it was clearly untrue information, it scared the living daylights out of me, I had a terrifying nightmare that night where the scammer actually came to my house! Thank you Lakewood Scoop for sharing this, I can now sleep better knowing I’m not the only one. I just want to add that it doesn’t matter what the person says, when a creepy person shows you that they have your email, home address and phone number it’s just plain terrifying.
Same! Just now! Thank you!!!
The Rebono Shel Olam is always watching.
Hashem knows your address.
Hashem hears and sees everything.
In Chavis’s zechus, we should all be more careful to watch out eyes this Elul and in turn we will be able to recognize such scams and all the other Bracha in our lives. Amein.
Live in NY and got this, cops opened the link to check it and it leads to nowhere. FYI.
I got it again, 2nd time in a month, but from a diff email address this time. they won’t give up
Someone I know, who lives in Eretz Yisrael, got this email too. However the name and address the scammer used, was that of someone who lives in Brooklyn, whose name and address he has used on the past to order things from Amazon. So he figures that the breach must have been from Amazon, because this is the only correlation between his own email address, and the name and address in Brooklyn that the scammer used.
It seems like the sender got hacked a business that takes online orders and does deliveries to the Lakewood community. otherwise why were most of the recipients from Lakewood? yet the person is clueless about the fact that a huge percentage of our community don’t have smartphones, so nobody took his threat seriously, BH