New Scam: Asian and Ethnic Business Extortion Scheme

The Federal Bureau of Investigation sent out an alert from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) today. The FBI is currently aware of a nationwide attempt to extort ethnic business owners, mostly of Asian decent, through telephonic threats of violence. The telephone calls appear to be originating from foreign countries. The caller acquires an adequate amount of open source information about the victim through Internet searches. This misleads the victim into believing the subject has personal knowledge about the victim. There have been no reported incidents of violence actually perpetrated to date.

Individuals who receive phone calls or e-mails containing threats of violence and their personally identifiable information (PII) are encouraged to contact law enforcement as well as file a complaint at www.IC3.gov.

Whatever you do, do not provide additional personal information or details to the caller. Tell the caller that you have to check some information and ask for a call-back number. Treat this call as a phishing scam.

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