Extortion-blackmail email from a writer?

I have received and email from tjhunglui@, the message is as follows,

Dear (my name)

This is to inform you that I have been following you closely and I have sufficient evidence on you purchasing papers for marking @(school)
I expect your response or I forward the same to your university for an disciplinary action.
Thank you

Me- " I think you have the wrong email".

tjhunglui@- I have the instructions, details and the paper purchased through academic writing sites.
If you want to ignore it, lets see what your academic advisor will say about it

Me- what is this about?

tjhunglui@- As it stands, your academic life is in the balance, and it is solely dependent on my silence. If you can buy that, you are safe

Me- no response

tjhunglui@- your silence means a lot to me.

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Has anyone else experienced this?
I contacted the writing service and they are looking into it. They informed me to not respond at all (after I responded)

To me it looks like an email written by a typical African fraudster (most of those who we know pretend to be 'academic writers'). They follow various message boards like EssayChat or social media platforms in the hopes of finding a vulnerable student who has posted some 'I need help with my essay' message along with their direct or indirect contact information. They assume that the student will get scared and pay them money via Western Union or Paypal. The same people send out scam emails about lottery winnings, unexpected inheritance, or big money transfer deals.

EVEN IF you have purchased an example academic paper, it's not a crime, so I'd safely ignore it and not reply any more. The fraudster will likely move on to harass other students.

Btw - what do you mean that you contacted 'the writing service'?

I enlisted the service of a writing company for an assignment, one i didn't even submit yet since it has another part I still have to do.

I contacted the writing service and forwarded the emails to them. They claim they are running it through their security system. I'm not sure what they can do since the damage is done. I never posted on any site before about this so not sure how I became a victim that way. It must be a writer who had access to my uploaded files since they know my details.

.. or the 'writer' used another contractor to work on it. If you followed the service's TOS, I'm not sure what kind of damage can be done to you. Whoever it was he's most likely to leave you alone if you ignore him.

@Major

The only thing I can think of is I requested to have another writer do the paper. When i received my order it was of a completely different topic, one not covered in any spectrum of my course. They didnt fully understand or grasp the material. When i submitted it to customer support they aggred and assigned a new writer. That may have hurt their feelings?

It's possible.. anyway, as I mentioned, this kind of email message has probably been written by someone who has experience writing / sending such emails.

This is definitely blackmail. The question is, did he get to you or not? If he did not get to you because you know you have a clean conscience, never used the paper for a grade, and did not interact with this writer in any way, then this fraudster has nothing on you. Your academic adviser will say nothing because he does not have access to that person. Even if he did, the mere fact you never used the inferred paper means the adviser will merely laugh at it.

Look, the reason that these online blackmailers are empowered is because the students choose to let fear overcome them. They prey on the "idea" of academic dishonesty, which, quite frankly, student's seem to understand very little about. If the students did understand how the academic honesty system works, then they would know that these online blackmail scams have no real teeth and that the only reason is proliferates is because the students keep paying off the con writers for something they did not do, but thought about doing. Or, as in this case, partially did but did not use. If you don't use the paper, then all the more you can ignore this person's emails.

@Lillylil
One thing I notice you didn't mention is whether you included your email address in the paper instructions sent to the writer. I will respond assuming you did because otherwise there's no way a writer would have contacted you directly.

If what you are saying is true (that you've never posted on any other site), then whoever sent you the emails must be either an internal employee of the writing company or a writer.

The way many essay companies work nowadays is that they try to flag and exclude any personal client information/details from the content/material(s) made available to writers. One of the main reasons for this is to prevent cases of writers getting smart and trying to snatch customers away from the company. Unless the writer needs your login credentials to access some library or database to aid in completing your paper, there's no reason they should know your email address. If the company you engaged takes this precaution, then the person attempting to extort you is not a contracted writer but an internal employee of the company, someone in their Customer Service team or one of the other departments.

If, on the other hand, the company does not screen clients' contact info (which is extremely reckless), then it could be any writer who viewed the order details/files from the public assignments board and picked your email address from there.

What complicates your case is the fact that various writers are involved. So, even if the company had taken all necessary precautions, they still might not conclusively pinpoint the culprit, unless your email was revealed to some and not all of them.

I'm curious to understand what the company means when they say "they are running it through their security system". Unless the imbecile was brain-dead and tried extorting you using the same email address as one the company has in its records, there is not much they can go with. This is, of course, assuming the person did not sign off on the emails with their real names.

In my experience, the companies don't ordinarily provide writers with any customer's identity or contact information directly, but sometimes, all of that same information is all over the materials sent in by the customer in the scanned files that are necessary for the project. This is exactly how I came to know that the one company for which I was writing was actually many different essay companies: the first page of those files often displayed the name of the company and url from which the customer had ordered the project. Prior to that, I'd assumed that those companies were competitors. When that's the case, it's not just the writer who actually takes the project who has access to that information, because the project files are viewable to every writer who wants to see all the material associated with the project before deciding whether or not to take it. If that's the case with the company involved, they'd really have no way of identifying the blackmailer, simply because it could be any writer who reviewed those materials.

The blackmailing scams appears to have slowed down these days. I guess the fact that the students are now more educated about the writing company and direct writer hiring process, that to ES and other sites, have a great deal to do with that. However, there are still fraudsters out there who will try to fleece the students for their silence. That is why I have told the students who come to me for advice on a personal basis, get a different email address just for dealing with the writing company. Use if for the written communication until the project is over, then delete the email account. They cannot blackmail someone when the messages bounce. I strongly advice them to do this for every paper that they want to have written for them, regardless of whether it is a writing company or an independent writer. The only way to protect yourself from blackmail is to make sure they cannot get to you after the project is completed. Erase all evidences of you ever having used a writing company or professional. That's the only way.