Whacked?

Last night, before I went to bed in the first few minutes after midnight, I checked my email one last time.

I found this charming missive in my inbox, from the email address "HITMAN":

Lucky You.

I am pleased to inform you that we have been paid to assassinate you by your co-worker in your office. want you to listen very carefully about your safety and do not, i repeat, do not try in anyway doing anything funny in other words, trying to inform any security agent because this is our business, and we know how to do it best.

We have our network all over the world.In order not to endanger your life the more you are advice to co-operate with us to know if we can change our initial plan to assassinate you. Once you are in receipt of this message, i will like you to get back to us immediately as delay is dangerous.

I wait to hear from you on this matter within the next 24 hours and that is if you appreciate and love your existence. Please do not in anyway communicate this or discuss this with anybody because you wouldn't knowwhom you are talking with. OUR WATCH-DOG ARE ON YOU. DO NOT MAKE ANYMISTAKE.

GOD BE WITH YOU,GOOD LUCK!!!.

Not exactly the type of love note I want to find in my inbox at midnight, when I'm sleepy and not quite rational.

I stared at it for a minute, then decided it couldn't possibly be real and deleted it. I mean, I'm pretty sure that I haven't pissed off anyone at the office quite that much. Really, the most my coworkers would want to do to me is stuff a sock in my mouth to stop me from coughing so much, and the meds are taking care of that already. But whacking me? I think not.

I sat for another minute, thinking about how icky it was, and then checked Snopes, just to be absolutely sure, because it was midnight and I wasn't quite as rational as I usually am. Yep, it's a scam. Even so, I reported it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. Then I went to the domain from whence the email came and reported it there, too.

So yeah, another scam averted, at least for me. But I wonder how many naive folks out there might get this piece of trash and freak the fuck out? I mean, this isn't an "I have umpty-million dollars that I need to smuggle out of the Ivory Coast" or "I'm a patriotic GI who recovered millions of Saddam's ill-gotten gains" bit; this is actually kind of scary, imaginary though it may be.

So I figured I would put it out there, just in case someone reading this gets a love letter from Mr. Hitman too.