The cryptocurrency market is plagued with cyber criminals, and scam artists whose sole goal is to part investors with their hard-earned assets. Crypto-related crime is at an all-time high, with security analysts suggesting that stealing crypto is as “easy as robbing banks.”

Now, a new scam has surfaced that has become widespread enough for the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Division of Consumer and Business Education to warn potential victims in a new publication dubbed “How to avoid a Bitcoin blackmail scam.”

The new scam apparently targets cheating spouses, in particular husbands, who are then blackmailed to send a large sum of Bitcoin to the scammer’s address. The scammers threaten to spill the beans to their wives unless the payment of Bitcoin is sent in full. The FTC calls it a “criminal extortion attempt to separate people from their money.”

The FTC shared a sample blackmail letter, saying it’s enough to “send shivers down anyone’s spine”:

“I know about the secret you are keeping from your wife and everyone else. You can ignore this letter, or pay me a $8600 confidentiality fee in Bitcoin”.

Scammers will often keep claims vague in hopes a guilty conscience will cause unrest and eventually action in the target victim. Unless the scammer has close ties to the victim, it is unlikely that the scammer has any damning information, and instead is using what the FTC calls “classic signs of a scam” such as threats, intimidation, and high-pressure tactics.

While the FTC’s report focuses on men who are having affairs, it appears that women aren’t safe from blackmail scams involving Bitcoin either. In the comments section of the FTC’s bulletin, female users share similar stories of blackmail scams, instead threatening to expose pornographic images and videos of the female target unless a sum of Bitcoin is sent.