I sincerely doubt both the existence of these "hidden messages" and the ulterior motives ascribed to the later spam extortion email. The author is trying to be

I sincerely doubt both the existence of these "hidden messages" and the ulterior motives ascribed to the later spam extortion email. The author is trying to be too clever, to the point of delusion. There are plenty of places where scam cultures exist, where spam email formats (they used to be called modalities) are passed around between participants, many of which are newbies trying to score big, often still minors. They may have seen or heard of one or two people around them hitting big with a scam and that's all the motivation they need to send out a hundred more messages. Spammers are not always some super-smart entity, they can be clueless teens cargo-culting their way into your inbox too.