Nadav Samet’s Blog

It is very common to hear stories in which criminals ask restaurant or shop owners to pay them money for the criminal’s “protection services”. Those who dare not to pay them, usually sorry for that few days after, when they find their business burning in flames.

Well, it seems that this phenomenon is now spreading in the blogosphere, as ShoeMoney, one of my favorite bloggers, received a letter asking him to pay protection money for protecting his Adsense income:

Subject: Alarm
From: “dragon dragon”
Date: Wed, March 7, 2007 1:05 pm
To: jeremy@shoemoney.com
————————————————————————–

This is a warning and if you don’t pay attention to it you will suffer from bad turns.
All your income is through Google Adsense and if you do not cooperate with us we will stop this income source. We would like you to pay us the total amount of USD 200 each month. This small amount could be considered as nothing compared to your earnings from Adsense. If you do not pay this amount we will have to close your account by the help of special robots and …! I am not happy to do this but I have to as there is no way out of it and I trust if you were me you would also have to do the same. I am an inventor and I have recently innovated a new design which will be accepted by scientific societies only if I can present a model in advance; and making the model takes money. They will register my new design only after they have checked all aspects of the same. My theory is changing the power into energy. If I succeed many big problems will be solved. All my design specification could be viewed in the following web log:

magnetic-machine.blogspot dot com

The magnets will be bought in installments and the amount you pay is to be paid monthly for the same. After the registration of my design, the entire amount which I received from you will be paid back.

If you collaborate with me, you have helped to the science. And if not, I will have to close your Google AdSense account. I seek your help for the sake of the Science and if you are not prepared to collaborate I will have to close your Google AdSense account

Oh well, at least he promises to pay the money back later.