| | |  Americas & Beyond | September 2008 
Mexico Looks to Thwart Growing Crime
 Sean Holstege - Arizona Republic
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Crooks' latest scheme: fake kidnappings
Phoenix - A new brand of kidnapping is sweeping Mexico and being exported to the United States.
Mexican extortion gangs have come up with two ways to bilk people out of ransom money without actually kidnapping anyone, US investigators say.
Virtual abduction: Kidnappers find out when someone in the United States is traveling to Mexico and then demand ransom from the traveler's family. The extortionists know the traveler is incommunicado, perhaps in a remote area without cell phone service. They gamble that graphic threats of mutilation and death will compel families to pay before they find out the traveler is, in fact, safe.
Posing as smugglers: In a new and more common scheme, con artists obtain smugglers' lists of illegal immigrants. They call the immigrants' families in the United States, pose as the smuggler and demand ransom. Often, the immigrants are waiting to cross or on their way to a U.S. destination when the ransom call is made.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Phoenix division typically gets a report once a week of a hostage being held by smugglers. About a quarter of the kidnapping claims are bogus, said Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Armando Garcia, who oversees such cases.
"Virtual kidnapping is real," Garcia said. "Last week, we had three. These cases take up a lot of our attention. I think it is picking up."
In July, the Phoenix Police Department investigated when parents reported getting a call from someone claiming to be holding their 16-year-old daughter for about $2,500. The FBI was called in and an international search begun, but it turned out the girl was safe with relatives in Mexico and the family never paid the ransom.
Other reports come in from family members around the country who say a smuggler used a Phoenix-area cell phone to call them. Typically, the con artists are seeking $2,000 to $4,000, double the usual smuggling fee.
In June, immigrant smugglers left a woman to die in the desert near Tucson, Ariz., because she was slowing down the group, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. That didn't stop a virtual kidnapper from calling the woman's family in Houston for a smuggling fee, which the family didn't pay. The body wasn't found for two weeks, and the family knew nothing about the woman's fate.
It's not surprising that many immigrants are fooled by the intimidation.
Kidnapping strikes a deep, raw nerve in Mexico.
• News media accounts describe people buying radio transmitters to embed in their skin so that loved ones can track them if abduction gangs seize them.
• Talk has grown of establishing the death penalty for kidnappers.
• Last week, tens of thousands of people marched in Mexico City demanding that the government clamp down on kidnapping.
Mexico City set up a hotline in December for people to report extortion attempts. After four months, authorities reported logging 44,000 complaints, which included more than 1,600 people who had paid virtual kidnappers. |
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