‘Mom, help me!’: A sinister billion-dollar ‘cyber’ kidnapping scam born in Mexican prisons and perfected by Chinese gangs has come to America. And there’s one foolproof way to protect yourself and your family
The call comes out of the blue. Perhaps, you recognize the number.
We have your daughter,’ shouts a strangely menacing voice on the line. ‘Send us money or she dies.’
‘Mommy, please help.’ Your heart stops. It’s your child’s voice.
Panicked, a family does whatever they’re told to secure their loved one’s release from an apparent kidnapping, including wiring tens of thousands of dollars, immediately, to a specified account or even dropping a bag of cash on a street corner.
We have your daughter,’ shouts a strangely menacing voice on the line. ‘Send us money or she dies.’
‘Mommy, please help.’ Your heart stops. It’s your child’s voice.
Panicked, a family does whatever they’re told to secure their loved one’s release from an apparent kidnapping, including wiring tens of thousands of dollars, immediately, to a specified account or even dropping a bag of cash on a street corner.
‘They tell the victims to isolate themselves, and they monitor them through Facetime calls or Skype,’ said Casey Warren, chief of Riverdale police. ‘The victims comply out of fear their families will be harmed if they don’t.’
It’s not exactly clear what these con artists told the teenager, Kai Zhuang, that convinced him to believe such a bizarre ploy, but nonetheless he apparently became an unwitting accomplice. He was discovered by police ‘very cold and scared’ and in want of a hot cheeseburger but otherwise unharmed.
Riverdale police said the crime was new to them, but fraudsters have been perfecting the scam for decades.
Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, first came across the scheme in Mexico more than two decades ago. ‘It became a cottage industry, run by people both in and out of the Mexican prison system,’ he told DailyMail.com. Convicts would bribe prison guards to give them cellphones, then the crooks would open the phonebook and start calling numbers at random.
Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12928975/cyber-kidnapping-utah-chinese-ransom-photos.html
