| | |  Editorials | Issues | September 2008 
'Virtual Kidnappers' Target Illegal-Immigrant Families
 Jacques Billeaud - Associated Press
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| | This billboard calls for help to find a man who was kidnapped in Mexico City. A new trend, dubbed "virtual kidnapping," appears to be on the rise in Latin America, where residents will receive a call from a person pretending to be a family member held for ransom, and will be asked to quickly pay up. (AP/Gregory Bull) | | |
Phoenix - Families of illegal immigrants in Arizona are increasingly being targeted by an extortion scam in which criminals falsely claim to have kidnapped their loved ones as the immigrants tried to sneak across the U.S. border with Mexico.
The culprits behind so-called "virtual kidnappings" typically strike when illegal immigrants make the three- to four-day journey through the remote desert, where they are cut off from communicating with family members. Relatives are told to cough up thousands of dollars or their loved ones will be maimed or killed.
"It's just an extension of what happens in Mexico," said Armando Garcia, assistant special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona, where the trend first appeared five years ago and has escalated to an average of one case being reported each week.
Investigators believe virtual kidnappers get the names and phone numbers of immigrants' families either by buying them from smugglers or by posing as helpers who can connect illegal immigrants with smugglers in Mexican border towns.
One family paid $7,000 before calling authorities about the scam. Once a ransom is paid, the criminals will often ask for more money and sometimes even demand that families cover the cost of the kidnapper's cell phone.
The kidnappers are convincing. They speak good English and use cell phones with a Phoenix area code so it looks like they are in the Arizona capital, even though they are probably making the calls from Mexico, where the extortion money is often sent.
Virtual abductions have also been reported in San Diego, where immigration agents investigate two to three each year, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for that city's office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It's not hard to trick families into believing an actual kidnapping has happened.
Relatives of illegal immigrants know that human trafficking is a violent business in which customers who have already paid their smuggling fees are sometimes held captive while smugglers try to squeeze more money out of friends and family.
Immigrants aren't the only ones risking abduction. Since the beginning of 2007, Phoenix has had more than 560 kidnappings in which drug and immigrant traffickers, and their families, have been abducted by fellow criminals and held for ransom.
Immigration agents are stumped about why Arizona is seeing an increase in virtual kidnappings, and they believe the number of cases is probably higher because some cases go unreported. Immigrants and their families don't want to risk being deported, or they are embarrassed about getting ripped off.
Virtual kidnappings also drain law enforcement resources because investigators have to assume that the ransom calls are valid.
A telltale sign of virtual kidnappings is an unwillingness of the scammers to put the supposed abduction victim on the phone. Smugglers who are really holding someone hostage will often let family members speak to the relative.
Immigration agents recommend being skeptical of ransom demands if the caller does not allow relatives to speak with family members who are supposedly being held captive.
In one case, a woman who got a call that her ex-husband was kidnapped called the scammers' bluff, saying she didn't want to speak with them if she couldn't speak with him. The criminals started calling the man's girlfriend.
Virtual kidnappers will eventually change phones and move on to the next victim if they can't extort money from a family.
"Maybe it's working with 10 out of 100 people that they call," said Garcia, the Arizona immigration agent.
Virtual Kidnappings: On the Rise
Carolyn Lippert - CBS News
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Over 44 Thousand Extortion Attempts Reported Since Dec. 2007
There is a mass psychosis in México.
Greg Cowal, an American businessman living in Mexico, received a call one day from someone claiming to have kidnapped his college-age daughter. The caller gave him instructions to drive until he got to a street corner, where he left his watch and one thousand dollars. When Cowal found his daughter at home, he realized he paid ransom for a fake kidnapping.
Cowal’s experience is not an unusual one. ‘Virtual kidnappings’ have become a common extortion technique in Mexico, where there are many people who know or heard of someone that has been kidnapped that they easily fall victim to telephone extortionists.
The extortionists usually call a random phone number and put a screaming child or an adult pretending to be a child on the line. The victim may mistakenly think that it’s their own child and sometimes even reveals the name himself by calling it. A man then gets on the line and makes a list of demands.
A hot-line to report these calls was set up in Mexico City in December 2007. Since then there have been over 44 thousand calls to report extortion attempts. Mexico City’s local government says 22,851 extortion attempts were avoided and 1,627 people reported that they paid "virtual" kidnappers since that date. In addition the hot-line is receiving thousands of calls from other states outside of Mexico City that do not have their own hot-lines. Mexico City’s Police Chief, Joel Ortega, said there have been eight arrests and 3,415 telephone numbers have been identified as those of the extortionists.
Fernando Pacheco, a retired Mexican engineer, came to close to being another victim of extortionists. "Papa do what they say to save me," he heard someone say on the phone one day as he was sitting in his son’s apartment recovering from an operation. "We don’t want to harm him, just follow our instructions. Do not call the police. Look for everything of value in the house," said someone who got on the line. Pacheco immediately got into a taxi to go to his own house and get money, but was warned by the taxi driver that this was a common extortion practice. This was confirmed when Pacheco called his son and he answered his phone.
Another American couple living in Mexico was also easy prey for the extortionists. The wife got a call about her son being kidnapped. The husband immediately came home to wait for another call from the "kidnappers" and started gathering all the cash they had to pay as ransom. Fortunately for the family, the son came back home before the extortionists called.
The public is becoming educated about virtual kidnapping problem and the number of people that pay the extortionists is declining as the word gets out, said Pável Camero Cardeña, Coordinadator of Citizens Agents for the Mexico City Public Safety and Attorney General's Office. |
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