A Studio City man says he has fallen victim to a scam the FBI says is hitting affluent communities across the country.
Brandon Melgar told NBC4 he got a letter in his mailbox recently suggesting he was unfaithful to his wife even though he's single and demanding $15,550 in bitcoin cryptocurrency to keep it a secret.
Melgar became suspicious and alerted police.
"This is kind of like blackmail," he said.
Calling the person by name, the letter reads, "I have evidence of what you've been hiding. I won't go into specifics here in case your wife intercepts this but you know what I'm talking about."
The FBI has been trying to find the people responsible for the nationwide scam.
Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman, said that the agency is seeing this type of variation on what she said was a prevalent scheme targeting random individuals.
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"Whether they claim to have information about a loved one, or to have kidnapped a loved one, or some other extortionate scenario, they are targeting a large swath of individuals and hoping to get lucky," Eimiller said in a statement.
She said that even if a small percentage of victims who are targeted send money, the culprits make a profit with little effort.
"They count on the probability that some men likely are cheating on their wives, or that some women are cheating on their husbands, and that the threat of being found out will convince the victim to send money," she said.
But the reality, she said, is that the perpetrators likely have no information about the victims' personal life.
If you think you're a victim of such a crime, Eimiller suggested reporting the scam to the FBI's internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov and never send money.
"Even in the event the perpetrator did have real evidence that the victim were cheating on their wife, and the victim did send money, there is nothing stopping the victim from being extorted continuously," she said.
