I was driving home Saturday on Highway 110 when the music on the radio was interrupted by a phone call. The number displayed on the dashboard was (111) 111-1111 – an obviously fake number. I should have just let it go straight to voicemail, but for some reason I answered.
“Dad, you have to help me!” said a young, almost hysterical voice. “Please help me!”
It didn’t sound like it was any of my sons, but the caller was so upset, I couldn’t be sure. “Who is this?” I asked.
“Dad, it is I! I need help!” The caller replied, but then a different voice appeared and the elder asked if I would help my child. He said that if not, he was ready to put a bullet into the child’s brain.
I was sure that the crying child was not my eldest son. And I knew exactly where my youngest son was, so I was sure that it wasn’t him either. But when I demanded some evidence that this was, in fact, a baby of mine, the older caller threatened to send me baby fingers.
He pushed me to make a decision: Either agree to help (he hadn’t yet put a price on it), or say goodbye and send my child to a cartel south of the border, where some unspeakable atrocity awaited him. By then, I had recognized the call as a scam. I said goodbye.
It was an easy and correct decision, but still nerve-wracking. My wife checked in with my oldest son, who said he was fine and that the call was fake. My youngest son came out of his engagement just over an hour later.
My blood pressure returned to normal sometime after that.
How does the scam work?
Eric Arbuthnot, an FBI special agent, said that this type of “virtual kidnapping for ransom” is usually the work of prisoners in foreign prisons. Arbuthnot said they had been victimizing Hispanics in the United States for years until the operation expanded in 2015 with the help of English-speaking inmates in Mexico. Now, he said, bogus kidnappers are making thousands of cold calls to the United States from foreign boiler rooms every day, hoping to hit the phone of someone with a child or young relative.
These phone extortion schemes work like this: When you answer the phone, the caller will yell or cry something along the lines of, “Mom, Dad, help me!” The caller is counting on you to divulge the name of the child you think is in trouble, Arbuthnot said. Then the caller hands the phone to another person who threatens to kill, maim, or turn your child over to a cartel unless you send the money right away.
Typically, these scammers demand a ransom of just a few hundred dollars, Arbuthnot said, which they’ll want to send via Western Union or MoneyGram. The amounts are relatively modest because US laws and regulations discourage scammers from transferring large sums of money to other countries. But the scammers make up for this by falling back on their crimes in volume.
Aside from pretending to be on the phone, scammers don’t do much to cover their tracks. Arbuthnot said this is because they are already in prison and are not afraid of being sued in the United States.
Arbuthnot said the scammers ask their victims in California to wire money to Mexico, using the name of a real person who has some connection to the prison but who might not be wise to the scam. This person will then deliver the money to the jail for a small deduction. The goal is to collect the money as soon as it comes in, before the victim realizes it and tries to stop the payment.
“Once it’s collected, it’s gone,” he said.
What should you do
If you receive a call like this, the FBI’s advice is simple: hang up and track down your son or daughter to make sure the call was a hoax. It’s okay if you can’t find your child right away and have to jump through a few extra hoops to make sure — in the unlikely event that it’s a real ransom demand, the kidnapper will keep calling, Arbuthnot said.
He added that the number of actual kidnappings for ransom is dwarfed by the number of phantom kidnappings. Kidnappings of children on their way back from school, he said, are “extremely rare,” and these kidnappers will not contact you because they are not looking for money.
The New York State Department suggests trying to confirm the identity of the relative involved by asking the caller several questions that only your relative would be able to answer. Given the number of details people share about themselves on social media, however, this may not be a foolproof way to spot scams, warns Soren Mihajlovici, founder of cheat detector.
The person who called me and pretended to be my child didn’t use a name or suggest a gender, waiting to fill in those blanks. I wondered if I could get the older caller to put his hand away by tricking him into saying something patently false—say, by asking where he was holding my daughter—but I suspect he was up for it.
My wife offered a better idea: give my sons a secret phrase to say if they really do need urgent help, and don’t tell anyone else about it. But then we all have to remember what it is.
similar schemes
Other relatives in trouble scams use the same basic techniques but without the threat of imminent violence. The goal is to make you panic, and before you have a chance to really think through the situation, push the money.
One example is the “grandparenting scam,” where a senior gets a call from someone who says their grandchild needs help immediately—perhaps bailed out of jail or flown to a hospital after a car crash.
Scammers may tip their hand by claiming a payment method that doesn’t make sense in context. Arbuthnot said there are scammers asking for prepaid gift cards; In one case, a fraudster posing as an FBI agent wanted to be paid into Google Play cards. “The FBI never asks people for money, and if we did, it wouldn’t be in Google Play cards,” he said.
Not all relatives scams involve cold calling. Mihajlovici said some scammers will do some research on their victims first, “then contact credible reasons to claim a reward.” Arbuthnot said scammers may also choose targets by buying “lead lists” on the dark web of people who have fallen for scams in the past.
Mihajlovici said social media makes the task of gathering personal details easier. The scammers can identify parents or grandparents on Facebook, find their cell phone numbers online, and then “create personalized threatening conversations using children’s names, so victims really believe the scammers have children”.
“They throw in some other personal information (also collected from Facebook), such as certain hobbies of the kids, distinctive clothes, hairstyle or other assets they have, and then they paint a pretty believable picture of the parents/grandparents,” Mihailovici said. “That’s when they pay over the phone, or give away [credit card] Preparation.”
Last year, the Federal Trade Commission noted that scammers had started Collect cash in personFollow up on their calls by sending a rep to the victim’s home. One reason, Arbuthnot said, is that in-person deliveries can involve much larger sums of cash collected by agents (often inadvertently), who then send the money back from the United States in multiple batches. The other thing is that they work best for older victims who don’t have the ability or desire to find a Western Union office.
The pressure to act immediately and not consult anyone else is Giant red flag, says the FTC on its website. “Scammers play with your feelings,” says the agency. “They are counting on you to act quickly to help your family or friends. And they are counting on you to push nonstop to check if there really is an emergency. If you get a call like this, you can be sure it is a scam.”
Another tip-off, Mihailovici said, is when someone wants to get paid right away, while you’re on the phone. “If they ask you to pay now over the phone,” he said, “it’s 100% fraud.” That’s because legitimate companies or people who ask for real reminders of your final payments never ask for payment. [the] spot.”
If you are a victim of a scam
If you have fallen victim to a scam, you must report the scam to FTC through his online portal and into the FBI. The FTC also provides a list of steps you can take Try to get your money back; Whether you can do this depends on your payment method and how quickly you seek to cancel the payment.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, banks and finance companies that issue credit and debit cards can reverse fraudulent transactions. The same goes for money transfer companies like Western Union, but only if you’re in business before collecting the money. And if you mail cash, the US Postal Service may be able to intercept the package.
pay in CryptocurrencyThe FTC said, however, that would leave you with few remedies. So, too, you’ll be paying from your bank account through Zelle, which banks generally consider an authorized transfer and so Not reimbursable.
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