WEST JORDAN, Utah (ABC 4 News) - Maureen McGuire got several emails claiming to be from the FBI in Washington D.C. McGuire said, "I've gotten at least one a day" for about a week. She ignored them.
At first the emails just asked for money. She said one was almost pleading, "They're only asking you for 220-dollars. Why can't you pay this?"
But the last one got her attention. "I'm going to be arrested!" she said. And that wasn't the only threat. It claimed the FBI would confiscate her property, freeze her bank accounts and get her fired from her job.
It gave her a fright. "I could easily see people going for this because of the intimidation, the threats."
But then she read the details, "They want you to send it to Nigeria."
And then there was the bad grammar. Here's just one sentence from the email that approached non-sense: "Your ID which we have in our database been sent to all the crimes agencies in America for them to inset you in their website as an internet fraudsters and to warn people from having any deals with you. (sic)"
McGuire quickly figured out this was not from the FBI.
ABC 4 asked Debbie Dujanovic Bertram of the Salt Lake FBI office for confirmation. After examining the email, she said, "This is not how the FBI operates,"
"We're certainly not going to send you an email from the director of the FBI bullying you into sending money and making all kinds of threats. This is just an outright scam," Bertram said.
If you get a threatening email that claims to be from the FBI, what should you do?
Bertram recommends filing a complaint. It's easy. You can do it online. To get the form,
click here.
And then once you've filed the complaint, she suggested deleting the email.
She also warned against opening any attachments since they could contain a computer virus.
