File sharing has unfortunately attracted all kinds of scams over the years. One common way to get money from unsuspecting users is to set up bogus websites for P2P services that charge good money for membership plans and then offer little more than access to freely available applications.

A company targeting the German market is now trying to pull of a twist in this old scam that tops everything we’ve seen before.

Fastload.tv charges its customers more than 80 Euros (almost 130 USD) to access their file swapping service for a year - and then sends them letters threatening to send their name to German prosecutors.

That is unless they pay the company another 340 Euro (about 540 USD), according to a report of the German online magazine netzwelt.de.

From the letter Fastload sent to one of its customers. Check out the original article for a complete copy.

Netzwelt was able to get a copy of one of these extortion letters from one of the Fastload customers. The letter states: Read more »