A Mandan man reported an e-mail he received from a "hit man," indicating someone hired the sender to kill the recipient.

The e-mail said in return for a payment of $8,000, the "hit man" would not kill the recipient as he had supposedly been hired to do, said Mandan Police Sgt. Jay Gruebele

Also, if he paid, the sender promised to reveal who had put the price on the Mandan man's head.

Gruebele said the recipient did not recognize the sender's e-mail. The police advised the man to disregard the threat and delete the e-mail based on advice from the attorney general's office from similar incidents last year.

In August 2007, Bismarck police received a couple of similar reports in which citizens received e-mails from a "William Yahman Chichi," an Italian citizen and alleged hit man.

The subject line of those older e-mails said, "Why are you involve to be killed, reply or you wait for your death."

Those e-mails, similar to this recent one, indicated that "Yahman" had been paid $45,000 up front to kill the recipient and was to receive $20,000 more upon completion of the job.

The older e-mails also said the recipient could reply to possibly work out an arrangement to avoid their death, adding that the recipient's entire family would be killed if the message was reported to authorities.

The attorney general's office said the sender of such e-mails will likely request personal information and money. North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem advised those who receive such e-mails to delete them.

Stenehjem issued two news releases on these kind of e-mails last year. The releases said the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation investigated and concluded that the e-mails are not credible threats.

Stenehjem did caution that credible threats should always be reported to law enforcement.

Since publishing these two news releases last year, Liz Brocker, media spokesperson for the attorney general's office, said Tuesday the occurrences of this particular scam had tapered off.

"This is a reprehensible scam," he said in the August release. "It is clearly designed to scare the recipient into responding to the e-mail."

Bismarck Police Deputy Chief Dan Donlin, who was the public information officer when they incidents occurred last year, said no further incidents had occurred in the Bismarck area since the attorney general's statement was publicized last year.

"I think most people know now that this sort of thing isn't legitimate," Brocker said.

(Reach reporter Chris Rosacker at 250-8254 or chris.rosacker@;bismarcktribune.com.)