My iCloud was hacked..devices locked..ransom wanted for unlock PIN

I was watching a great show on my iPad when it suddenly went into lock mode with message:

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Lost iPad

Your device is locked. For unlock email

*********

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My iPhone also presented the same message at the same moment.

But seconds later I received a phone call from a friend and was able to answer it. When the call was over, I was able to swipe/unlock the phone and get to the home screen where I immediately went to the Find my iPhone app and saw that my iPad was flagged as a lost device. I changed my iCloud password to something stronger (caps, lowercase, symbols and numbers).

It's clear that, due to my weak password (which was a combo of 4 lowercase letters and 4 numbers), my iCloud account was hacked and someone wanted me to email that address where I would surely be quoted a price to unlock my own device.

My iPad remains locked and I think I will need to do a full reset so that it will prompt me for a wifi network and iCloud ID to unlock it again.

Anyone else get a similar alert? I googled that nefarious email address and only one hit came up from a german site a few days ago with someone complaining about the same problem.

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