Sextortion Scammers Change Tactics to Bypass Spam Protection

LASER_oneXM

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Low paydays in the first trimester of the year have prompted scammers in the sextortion email business to switch to new tricks to restore the revenue stream of the not too distant past.

Between August 30 and October 5 last year, operators of the 'Aaron Smith' sextortion email campaigns made almost 150,000 in bitcoin (~23 BTC) from victims. Since the beginning of 2019, profits decreased to about $17,000 (~3.5 BTC).

Bag of tricks
To relive the glory days, the scammers resorted to some simple tricks in an attempt to get their messages past the spam filters. Looking at the email below as interpreted by the email client, one would not suspect that it does not use normal lettering.
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