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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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To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.
-- B. Duggan
(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?