Bah humbug in Wellesley — Bitcoin extortionist betting residents have been naughty, not nice

Look out, Wellesley ne’er do wells. Somebody out there wants you to believe that he sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake. Unlike Santa, this “visionary” doesn’t wish you well, and in fact wants to shake you down to the tune of $8,500. Here’s the scam: first a letter arrives via the USPS addressed to who I’ll refer to as a Threatened Person. Next, the letter writer claims he knows exactly what the Threatened Person has been up to and will tell all unless $8,500 in Bitcoin is paid. Detailed instructions about how to make this happen are included. The letter writer takes a weary tone. He seems truly exhausted by the whole sordid business and just wants his due for all the time he put in digging up dirt on the Threatened Person.

I checked in with the Wellesley Police, and Lt. Marie Cleary said, “We have had a couple of residents either drop off letters or call to notify us of receiving them, but to our knowledge no residents have fallen prey to the scam. The envelopes have no return address and are postmarked out of state, but from different states. The people who have notified us suspected it was a scam and just wanted to let us know.”

Now you want to know, too, of course. so The Swellesley Report has obtained a copy of one of the letters. Here it is:

Hello, THREATENED PERSON. I’m going to cut to the chase. I know about the secret you are keeping from your wife and everyone else. More importantly, I have evidence of what you have been hiding. I won’t go into the specifics here in case your wife intercepts this, but you know what I am talking about.

You don’t know me personally and nobody hired me to look into you. Nor did I go out looking to burn you. It is just your bad luck that I stumbled across your misadventures while working a job around Wellesley. I then put in more time than I probably should have looking into your life. Frankly, I am ready to forget all about you and let you get on with your life. And I am going to give you two options that will accomplish that very thing. Those two options are to either ignore this letter, or simply pay me $8,500. Let’s examine those two options in more detail.

Options 1 is to ignore this letter. Let me tell you what will happen if you choose this path. I will take this evidence and send it to your wife. And as insurance against you intercepting it before your wife gets it, I will also send copies to her friends and family. So, THREATENED PERSON, even if you decide to come clean with your wife, it won’t protect her from the humiliation she will feel when her friends and family find out your sordid details from me.

Option 2 is to pay me $8,500. We’ll call this my “confidentiality fee”. Now let me tell you what happens if you choose this path. Your secret remains your secret. You go on with your life as though none of this ever happened. Though you may want to do a better job at keeping your misdeeds secret in the future.

At this point you may be thinking, “I’ll just go to the cops.” Which is why I’ve taken steps to ensure this letter can’t be traced back to me. So that won’t help, and it won’t stop the evidence from destroying your life. I’m not looking to break your bank. I just want to be compensated for the time I put into investigating you. $8,500 will close the books on that.

Let’s assume you’ve decided to make all this go away and pay me the confidentiality fee. In keeping with my strategy to not go to jail, we will not meet in person and there will be no physical exchange of cash. You will pay me anonymously using bitcoin. If you want me to keep your secret, then send $8,500 in BITCOIN to the Receiving Bitcoin Address listed below. Payment MUST be received within 10 days of the postmarked date on this letter’s envelope. If you are not familiar with bitcoin, attached is a “How-To” guide. You will need the below two pieces of information when referencing the guide.

Required amount: $8,500

Receiving Bitcoin Address:  a long code is listed

Tell noone what you will be using the bitcoin for or they may not give it to you. The procedure to obtain bitcoin may take a day or two so do not put it off. Again, payment must be received within 10 days of this letter’s postmarked date. If I don’t receive the bitcoin by the deadline, I will go ahead and release the evidence to everyone. If you go that route, then the least you could do is tell your wife so she can come up with an excuse to prepare her friends and family before they find out. The clock is ticking, THREATENED PERSON.

As our source said about his friend receiving one of the letters, “I found it fascinating. My only concern is that if I received such a letter, I might not know where to begin in figuring out which of my many past transgressions had been found out by the mystery writer!”

Indeed. Here’s to living a clean, wholesome, and guilt-free life.