Virtual Kidnapping — Social Media Info Targeted by Phone Scammers

EP McKnight
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

Even the most trained law enforcement personnel can become susceptible to bogus scams of this nature. When a love one is involved, reasoning can quickly go out the window. Between the wrong numbers, telemarketers and now scam calls, technology while a necessary evil/good warrants much common sense when dealing with a panic voice on the other end. Staying calm and reasoning should be the first thing to do. These callers play on the emotions on the other end of the phone and often have background noises to accommodate their scamming energies.

One extremely early morning, a family member of mine received an anonymous call stating that a family member was dead. This family member emotions went through the roof with crying and running next door to a neighbor to share what happened. The neighbor called other family members regarding this issue and confirmed the call was bogus. I contacted the family member who was extremely upset that all was well and it took a bit to calm down the family member. Thank God that the neighbor remained calm and logic persisted. In my opinion generally, women are more emotional than men.

A few years ago a lady was scammed out of her resources via a scam call threatening her daughter’s life. The mother panic and followed the instructions of the scammers to the letter even to the point of tearing up the $4000 Wire invoice pertaining to this money transaction in a particular number of pieces. This is how much control they had on her emotions. After this frantic mother did all that was requested, and returned home and made numerous calls trying to contact her daughter and left one desperate message that got her daughter’s attention, the daughter returned her call. She then discovered that her daughter was not kidnapped and not in any harm. These scammers played big time on the emotions of the moment to control their victims.

Recently the police made their first arrest in connection with the scam. Yanette Rodriguez Acosta, 34 of Houston, Texas was indicted on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering and now faces up to twenty years in prison, if convicted. Her and her accomplice used Mexican telephone numbers to scam Los Angeles and Beverly Hills resident with claims of holding their children as prisoners. Texas, Idaho and Minnesota were also targeted with a estimated 39 people being affected. Los Angeles alone has a record number of 250 calls costing victims an estimated $114, 000. Fifty (50) calls were made to Beverly Hill residents.

These call will target an area and make tons of call until they get a victim. These scammers research their victims via social media prior to making these calls so they have some truth of the family members. Through threatening violence these scammers force their victims to succumb and instruct them to wire money to Mexican’s accounts or to make physical money drops.

In conclusion, always, always be on guard of fake calls, stay calm and seek info and don’t overreact!! These scammers can only play on your emotions if you allow them. Let’s band together with knowledge and be aware. Alert family member, friends, neighbor and casual acquaintance. We may not be able to stop these scammers but we can certainly slow or reduce the victims numbers. Knowledge is the key!

Lastly, hope this was helpful. If you are now feeling stress, great you got my point. Now release your stress with a workout routine. Fitness is excellent for relieving stress and you don’t have to leave the comfort of your immediate surroundings. Checkout my YouTube fitness channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCybRr-FxDOpzK1o6e6RnO3g

EP McKnight

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Trying to provide the most useful thing you’ll read on any given day.

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