Fresh from the Washington Post’s Internet Crime log comes disturbing news of one of the more recent email scams aimed at Americans.

“In recent months, the [Internet Crime Complaint] Center has issued several alerts about the growing creativity in online scams. Aside from the usual requests for information on credit cards and debit cards, Web crooks have impersonated FBI agents who have demanded bribes or made threats; claimed to be State Department officials who discovered recipients’ inheritances abroad; and called themselves U.S. soldiers in need of help, usually involving banking information,” writes Karin Brulliard in the article.

But the real horror story involves a scam in which spammers claim that the recipient is about to be killed:

In recent months, authorities said, about a dozen Fairfax and Stafford county residents have received e-mails telling them that they are about to be killed. There is a twist: The killer offers a way out.

“The sender tells the receiver, ‘I’ve been hired to kill you, it’s one of your friends, I’m watching you. However . . . I don’t believe you did what they said, and I’m going to give you a chance to pay me, and I won’t kill you,’ ” Fairfax police spokeswoman Camille Neville said.

The e-mails are extortion for the electronic age, Fairfax and Stafford authorities said — scams to intimidate recipients into divulging personal information.

“What the sender is hoping to ‘hit’ is an individual’s bank account,” Bill Kennedy, a Stafford County sheriff’s office spokesman, said about the scheme.

The content of the messages varies, including the sum demanded, authorities said. The messages are often rife with spelling and grammar errors, Kennedy said. Authorities said they could detect no connection or pattern among the people who have received the e-mails, many of which were sent to work addresses.