Don't be fooled if you receive an e-mail from a professional hitman who says that he is willing to spare your life for a price - he's actually just a spammer hoping to get lucky.

The internet security firm Sophos gave warning today about the latest 'death threat spam' scam in which potential victims are told that they have a $50,000 contract on their lives.

The e-mail, in less-than-perfect English, claims that the recipient has been stalked by a hired assassin for the past ten days but the hitman is prepared to drop the contract if he is paid a total of $80,000. After a down payment of $20,000 he will provide taped evidence of the contract.

The spammer adds: "Do not contact the police or F.B.I. or try to send a copy of this to them, because if you do i will know, and might be pushed to do what i have being paid to do, beside, this is the first time I turned out to be a betrayer in my job."

The e-mail, from an Irish Yahoo address, starts with a cheery greeting of 'Good day', ends "Lucky You" and usually has the subject line "Read this to be safe and a new life in this new year".

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, said that the firm, which follows developments in computer viruses, spyware and spam, had received a fair number of reports about the death threat spam, which was targeted at high earners.

Mr Cluley told Times Online that he was not aware of anyone actually paying up yet - "although if they were dumb enough they wouldn't actually tell us" - but some recipients had taken it seriously, including a group of professionals in Philiadelphia.

They included several dentists - at least one of whom contacted the FBI - and a car dealer who drove straight to his local police station for protection.

"There are vulnerable people out there who could take it seriously. It could make them frightened," said Mr Cluley.

The Sophos experts do not yet know who is behind the scam, which uses a technique known as "spear phishing". "It could be anybody," Mr Cluley said. "This is a real growth area, these sort of scams, whether it be identity theft or 419 scams, but this one's a bit more creative that most.

"|I remember one from a Nigerian astronaut stuck on the Mir space station who couldn't afford to get back home, although he said he had a lot of money blocked in a bank account somewhere."

The e-mail in question does not contain any clickable links - instead recipients are asked to reply. If the recipient does reply, then the spammers know that they are in contact with a real person and can try to get either money or personal details that could be used for identity theft.

Sophos, which sells various internet security products, advises recipients not to reply to the death threat e-mail - just to delete it.

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