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The phone rang. It wasn't a number she recognized, but distracted by the bleeding thumb, she answered it. Mom always answers the phone.
She heard screaming. It sounded like her 23-year-old daughter's voice, begging for help. Then an unfamiliar voice announced, "We have your daughter."
What followed next was five hours of hell. And it was all a scam...
Police call it a virtual kidnapping — an old scam that is having a renaissance across the country and particularly in the Washington region. The callers target affluent areas and find enough information online to make their ruse plausible.
Mueller, 59, had no idea that she was being played. She believed her daughter's life was at stake and did everything she was instructed to do.
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‘We Have Your Daughter’: a Virtual Kidnapping and a Mother’s Five Hours of Hell
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There's no such thing as an original sin.
-- Elvis Costello
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday October 23 2016, @09:38AM
What law was actually broken?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @09:52AM
Well, for one thing, I don't think you can threaten someone even if you do it over the phone. I think that would be considered extortion.
(Score: 3, Informative) by stormreaver on Sunday October 23 2016, @10:17AM
What law was actually broken?
1) Fraud
2) Conspiracy
3) Stalking
4) Harassment
The list goes on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @12:21PM
Really grasping at straws, ain't 'cha?
On the one hand, this could play as a particularly tasteless joke (my friends have done worse, but we're all a bit funny in the head). On the other, the Halloween edition of the Nigerian Prince email.
This reminds me of the guy who use to call businesses claiming he was a police (at least there is the actual crime of impersonating an officer) get managers to do obscene things to some employee suspected of a crime.
The Milgram experiment immediately sprang to mind and the often overlooked part: several people refused.
Is it the people or the circumstance that is really at fault here? I'd say the people, both those that would follow blindly, and those looking for the blind to lead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @01:14PM
Letting gullibility punish itself sounds good until everything turns into an orgy of backstabbing fuckery. Seriously, you say this shouldn't be illegal, so I suppose you'd have no problem with me walking up to you and threatening to blow your brains out if you don't strip naked and give me everything? If you try to walk away - guess again - I've got some friends and you're surrounded, and we're all threatening you. Defend yourself, we claim self defense when we kill you, after all, threatening people wouldn't be illegal, and we can just say that the gun was yours and we took it after a struggle when you tried to unjustifiably kill us - after all, we were only trying to intimidate you into giving your possessions. And this is just the basic version, just imagine if me and my friends run a bank...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @01:42PM
You imagine that the orgy of backstabbing fuckery only travels in one direction, and not say facing 20 years on conspiracy charges so vague, you may have just committed a crime with your example.
Hard cases make bad law.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday October 23 2016, @03:48PM
You imagine that the orgy of backstabbing fuckery only travels in one direction, and not say facing 20 years on conspiracy charges so vague, you may have just committed a crime with your example.
So now, we're to excuse crimes because the criminal activity here is not clearly defined in your own head?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @07:03AM
Rather than "excuse crimes", we should simply have absolute freedom of speech. The things you claim are harmful are not actually truly harmful at all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 24 2016, @07:50AM
The things you claim are harmful are not actually truly harmful at all.
Like fraud? Extortion?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Sunday October 23 2016, @02:23PM
Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob everyone!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @01:16PM
> Really grasping at straws, ain't 'cha?
No. Lying to obtain money is the textbook definition of fraud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @01:31PM
Might want to notify the admen. Boy, will they be shocked.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @04:57PM
Not really. Ad companies are legendary in some of their attempts of just skirting the law. That is why you see all hard number prefixed with "up to" or with a footnote that reads "results not typical." But most of the time, they don't make any factual claims at all. Even with all that, the smaller players still get dinged all the time by the FTC.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 23 2016, @02:33PM
Multiple people conspired to fraudulently separate the woman from her money. You are grasping at straws in an attpempt to maintain the density and obtuseness of your head. It's time to trade in your box of rocks, man.
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Sunday October 23 2016, @03:43PM
Really grasping at straws, ain't 'cha?
Not at all. I'd add extortion and theft to the list and of course, the ubiquitous wire fraud.
On the one hand, this could play as a particularly tasteless joke (my friends have done worse, but we're all a bit funny in the head).
The obvious rebuttal is follow the money. If there was no intent to take money, then it's going to greatly weaken, if not rule out the case for the nastier crimes on the list. A "tasteless joke" where I end up paying $10k is not that. It's a pretty nasty crime.
Is it the people or the circumstance that is really at fault here? I'd say the people, both those that would follow blindly, and those looking for the blind to lead.
What circumstance? The opportunity to steal $10k from a gullible person is a circumstance. Actually stealing that money is a deliberate action not a circumstance. It's definitely the people who are criminals not the circumstances.
(Score: 5, Funny) by chewbacon on Sunday October 23 2016, @03:23PM
Wire fraud. If you're calling someone and telling them you've kidnapped their daughter, then you'd better have her hog tied on your end! Really, how could you explain that if you got caught? Probably easier to explain kidnapping.
(Score: 3, Funny) by isostatic on Sunday October 23 2016, @07:18PM
Wrong number -- you have someone else's daughter, honest mistake.
(Score: 4, Informative) by gman003 on Sunday October 23 2016, @08:25PM
Each state has their own laws, so for general questions like this I usually turn to federal law. It's more generally applicable, and is a lot easier to search.
18 U.S. Code § 1343: Whoever, having devised ... any scheme or artifice to defraud ... transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
18 U.S. Code § 875(b): Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
I don't think 18 U.S. Code § 1201 or 1202 would have been violated; the former only criminalizes actual or attempted kidnapping, not claims to kidnapping, the latter criminalizes receiving ransom money only in connection with § 1201. But we're already up to forty years imprisonment for fraud and extortion, which seems sufficiently illegal to me.