自本周一起，澳大利亞有數千人收到一條死亡威脅短信，稱如果不在48小時內支付5000澳元，就會性命不保。澳大利亞警方稱該短信可能是有組織犯罪團伙所為，并告誡人們收到此類短信后“不要回復，立即刪除，不要驚慌”。這條短信的具體內容為：“有人雇我殺你，想保命就在48小時內交出5000塊，報警或通知他人都會讓你喪命。”威脅內容之后，該短信還留下一個雅虎郵箱帳號作為聯系方式。目前，警方已將該郵箱帳號鎖定，并對背后犯罪分子所在的位置展開調查。

Thousands of Australians have received a "death threat" text, demanding they pay 5,000 Australian dollars ($5,140) or face being murdered.

Thousands of Australians have received a "death threat" text, demanding they pay 5,000 Australian dollars ($5,140) or face being murdered.

The scale of the scam has surprised the police authorities.

At a press conference in Queensland, Det Supt Brian Hay said: "Do not respond. Delete it immediately and don't panic... because that's what they prey upon."

The fraud is believed to be the work of an organized crime gang.

Huge scale

The message, which began to hit people's phones on Monday, reads: "Sum1 paid me to kill you. Get spared, 48hrs to pay $5000. If you inform the police or anybody, death is promised."

It directs people to a Yahoo email account which police have now disabled.

Mr Hay told reporters that enquiries were ongoing as to whether the criminals were based in Australia.

Some people had already fallen for the scam, mainly those with little experience of text messaging, he revealed.

He said that the scale of the scam was "unprecedented".

"We've never see this anything like this before - to have so many people contacted at the same time."

"There is an extraordinary amount of Australian consumer data that they are exploiting," he added.

He added that the scam was likely to be the work of organized criminals rather than an individual.

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(Agencies)

（中國日報網英語點津 Helen 編輯）