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‘We Have Your Daughter’: a Virtual Kidnapping and a Mother’s Five Hours of Hell

posted by janrinok on Sunday October 23 2016, @09:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-would-you-do? dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

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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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Sunday October 23 2016, @03:43PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 23 2016, @03:43PM (#417869) Journal

    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.

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