Oddly enough

Oddly enough

Bitcoin scammers target wealthy, threaten to expose ‘secrets’

CHEVY CHASE, Md.

Men in a wealthy Washington suburb have been receiving letters threatening to expose their dark secrets to their wives.

The problem, The Washington Post reported, is some of these men don’t even have wives.

The letters are part of a growing scam that tries to extort people for Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that’s hard to track.

FBI Washington Field Office spokesman Andrew Ames said these scammers tend to flood high-income neighborhoods, trying to fool at least one person.

Jeff Strohl said he received a Nashville-postmarked letter from “GreySquare15” demanding a Bitcoin “confidentiality fee” worth $15,750. After his initial shock, he figured it was a scam. He posted about it on a community listserv to find he was far from the only Chevy Chase resident to receive such letters.

Residents split on how to handle goose droppings

BRIGHTWATERS, N.Y.

Residents of a Long Island village are divided over what to do about a glut of goose droppings around town.

Brightwaters Mayor John Valdini told Newsday that the village has gotten about a dozen complaints about its Canada goose population in recent months. But the village also has gotten calls from residents who want to protect the birds.

Resident Peter Resing said his home is so coated in goose droppings that he’s worried about letting his grandchildren play there. The birds’ prolific droppings can raise bacteria and nutrient levels in lakes, which may cause algae blooms in the water and can raise public health concerns, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

“It is a problem, and something needs to be done,” Resing told the newspaper.

Resident Jonathan Landon, meanwhile, sees the geese as a part of the habitat and urges humane treatment of them.

“We cannot really make any sort of decisions based on one aberrant year in which we’ve had many successful breeding pairs,” Landon said.

Options could include passing a village law against feeding the geese; hiring trained dogs to scare them off; and putting corn oil on unhatched eggs to prevent them from hatching, DEC official Kelly Hamilton said.

Associated Press