I got an email this morning that said that a contract had been taken out on my life, and I could pay $40k to cancel it and get evidence against the person who took out the contract. Obviously spam, but very threatening. This has to be something the authorities would pursue more vigorously than your average nigerian or UK lottery windfall spam, but I don’t know who to report it to.
Why not report to your local police, and get their advice?
I guarantee your “local police” know dick-all about such a thing compared to the average doper.
Is there actually a police station in this country that wouldn’t laugh you out the front door if you walked in and told them about that email?
To the OP: do nothing. Who cares. You know it’s fake. I know it’s fake. It’s some asshole in Russia trying to get your bank account number. You’re not getting any more done than if you took offense because he wants you to get “A BULkY P0L3!!!”
Because it’s obviously spam, and we have a bunch of small town hick cops who probably would have trouble turning on a computer, so I doubt they’d know what to do.
Email them back:
“Thanks for the offer, but it’s ok now. I shot the asshole myself.”
The Loaded Dog wins! 
The FBI has some information (scroll down to near the bottom of the page).
I gotta say that’s a pretty good scam though.
As Barbara says down towards the bottom, if there any evidence that the sender knows you or your habits? Has your name? Says where he’s followed you? Knows your address or phone number? If so, contact the police. If not, laugh and delete.
What’s a A BULkY P0L3!!! and should I have one?
A bulky Pole is a large Polish body guard to protect you against Russian hired killers. I can tell you where to find one, but it’ll cost you.
What?
No, don’t.
If you email them back, their software marks your email address as ‘live’ – that it is a real, working email address that somebody reads.
When they sell lists of emails to other spammers, known ‘live’ email addresses fetch a higher price.
There are spammers who send out the most deliberately offensive messages that they can – pedophile sex with pre-teen children was one of them. Then the bottom of the email had a message “reply to ___ to be unsubscribed from this list”. Replying to that address did the same thing – their software marked this email address as ‘live’, so they could sell it to other spammers for a higher price.
The best thing to do with any spam of any kind is just to delete it. And don’t bother your local police about it – they have quite enough to do catching local criminals.
I thought this was a myth. Since it costs nothing to send email, sending to dead email addresses is not an issue, is it?
Thanks! I submitted a report. (Not that I think anything will come of it, but you never know!)
Yeah, but sending to 100 million dead email address would waste a lot of time. Time that could be used sending crap to good email address.
(WAG)
All correct but a minor nitpick.
If you just outright delete it they get feedback and know it is a live address. Either ignore it for a couple of weeks before deleting it or better, mark it as spam if you have the facility. Your ISP will delete spam at a regularly interval, generally a week to a month after it being received, so the spammers will assume it went directly to the spam heap.
Marking it as spam also benefits others as the ISP will recognise and intercept it.
Wasn’t the U.S. Secret Service tasked with fighting Internet crime? If the FBI blows you off, you might give the USSS a call.
Can you please explain how this works?
I get notices when co-workers delete my e-mails, but it doesn’t work outside the company. I, too, would like to know how this works. To me, they only know they have a “live” one is when there’s a reply.
It only works if it was sent with read and delivery receipts enabled, something a bulk spammer won’t do because they’d actually have to get off their asses and correlate the receipts to the outgoing mailing. It’s aLOT of grunt work.
Delete the message with impunity.