自本周一起，澳大利亚有数千人收到一条死亡威胁短信，称如果不在48小时内支付5000澳元，就会性命不保。澳大利亚警方称该短信可能是有组织犯罪团伙所为，并告诫人们收到此类短信后“不要回复，立即删除，不要惊慌”。这条短信的具体内容为：“有人雇我杀你，想保命就在48小时内交出5000块，报警或通知他人都会让你丧命。”威胁内容之后，该短信还留下一个雅虎邮箱帐号作为联系方式。目前，警方已将该邮箱帐号锁定，并对背后犯罪分子所在的位置展开调查。

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.