Kidnapping Scam - How it works

-- Thought this was a reasonably good piece about how the Kidnapping Scam is worked.

TikTok shocked by viral video about kidnapping scam: ‘I would 100% fall for this’
By Asia Grace
December 13, 2022
https://nypost.com/2022/12/13/tiktok-shocked- ... idnapping-scam/

Smartphone-savvy scammers are pulling a new hoax on folks.

When Chelsie Gates, a TikTok user from western Alabama, received a call from her mother’s cellphone at around 7 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 4, she answered with a cheery, “Hey Mom, what’s up?”

But to her dismay, rather than an equally gleeful response, Gates claimed she heard her mother weeping and being dragged away from the phone. Suddenly, a mysterious man commandeered the device and threatened a now-shaken Gates, saying: “Hey, I have your mom. And if you don’t send me money, I’m going to kill this [***].”

Gates, known on social media as @CityLivingSouthernGirl, recounted the harrowing incident in a viral advisory post, alerting her TikTok community to the latest cellphone-hacking scam known as “caller ID spoofing.”

The con allows fraudsters to “deliberately falsify the information transmitted to your caller ID display to disguise their identity,” per the Federal Communications Commission. Scammers, according to the FCC, will also often spoof phone numbers of people or companies that are in their target’s local community.

In Gates’ terrifying testimonial, which scared up more than 2.5 million views, she explained that her mother works as a home health-care attendant who routinely tends to patients at their private residences. And owing to her mom’s job, Gates automatically assumed that one of her mom’s clients was holding her at gunpoint.

“In my head I’m like, ‘It’s happened. A patient has taken her hostage and this is for real,’ ” she admitted. Gates went on to explain that the menacing male voice aggressively urged her to send him $1,000 via either CashApp or Venmo as the woman, who she believed was her mother, sobbed in the background.

“I said, ‘Sir, you have called the wrong kid. I don’t have $1,000 in my bank . . . All I have is $100,’ ” she recalled. “And he was like, ‘OK, send me that.’ ”

While on the phone with the purported kidnapper, Gates tried alerting her father to the madness via text message. But the criminal commanded her to neither hang up, call the police or involve anyone else in the conversation.

Before sending the money through CashApp, she asked to speak with her mother directly to ensure her well-being. However, Gates’ request was met with a slew of violent epithets from the fraudster.
“He was like, ‘Man, I will kill this [***] right now!’ ” she said, recounting the bone-chilling phone call.  “I was literally shaking during all of this,” confessed Gates. “[I was] imagining my mom being held hostage at gunpoint at a patient’s house.”

So, she sent the man the $100 ransom.

Immediately after receiving the funds, he ended the call, freeing Gates to call her mother’s phone to confirm that she’d made a clean escape. “I called the number back . . . and I’m like, ‘Mom, are you OK?’ ” said Gates, reenacting her terrified call. “And she’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’
“She had no idea what I was talking about.”

Realizing she had been swindled, Gates snapped a screenshot of the CashApp handle and phone number of the scammer who victimized her and her family.

Spooked TikTok watchers were stunned by the trending cautionary tale.

“That’s terrifying. I would’ve given them every penny to save my mom,” commented one viewer.
“I would 100% fall for this! thanks for bringing awareness to it!” said another.
“This is the second story like this that I’ve heard like the EXACT same kidnapping call scam,” another penned, adding the shocked emoji for emphasis.

In November, a woman known on TikTok as @AllottaAlexis garnered 1.2 million views on a clip in which she claimed scammers had spoofed her phone number and called her stepfather threatening to rape and kill her if he failed to send them $1,500.

Separately, a man who had just dropped off his 27-year-old daughter at the airport for a trip to New York City last month claimed he received a call from her phone demanding $1,500 in exchange for her life.

Now if only someone would fetch reporter Asia Grace from the corner of the bus depot in 2009 where the pay phone used to be. These kids today and their “Caller ID spoofing" and their lindy-hopping and Zoot suits and raccoon tails!

Spoofing is hardly "new", nor is a "scam", nor is it a "hack" job, much as that would describe those careless brisk references.

The term "virtual kidnapping scheme" must not have trickled down to everyone with no memory of the 1990s. I guess some tweenie needs to invent a snappy Extortionist Dance Challenge with prop improvised weapons before the warning grows legs. Makes me pine for Schoolhouse Rock and emergency medical instructions from the SuperFriends.

Prior discussion of that close gruesome cousin, the 'snuff picture' hustle:
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-206-825-2940#p1989869870785239566

Just once I would like to encounter an article like this including a report of someone (with a bit of common sense) that upon hearing "Hey, I have your mom. And if you don’t send me money, I’m going to kill this [***]." responds with "OK, go ahead.", if only to read about how the would-be scammer reacted.

Not the best reporting, I agree. I almost didn't start this thread due to the reporters imprecision when it comes to defining what Spoofing is and isn't. Reporters love buzzy words that get attention, and "Hack" can get the attention of a lot of readers who are intimidated by the vaguely technical. They can't tell you want "Hack" is, but the know it is bad. Movies and TV taught them that.

I thought the story was worth posting since it was a fair outline of structure of the scam, and pointed out some of the holes in the scam that might help someone who ever got one of these calls – help them to take a harder listen to what was said and ask themselves some questions.

The story also described that fear reaction that can grip and take hold of people who get this sort of call. Fear and urgency are essential to convincing the victim. Like the call in the middle of the night as in the the “Granny I been arrested/in an accident” scam.

There are still a good number of people who will readily believe The Voice On the Phone, and with a spoofed name as confirmation, that is all they need to be convinced.

Threats to someone you love are scary and powerful. Come think of it, the pet scammers depend on the same fear. Fluffy needs a better crate/needs a vet/needs an emergency transplant/needs a priest...

I concur with all your points, including the way Virtual Kidnap and Family Crisis schemes differ only by a few degrees. The worst has already happened in the latter, whereas the former promises the worst outcome itself as the motivating threat. Both invented problems are "resolved" by rapid payment to release a person from detainment.

Until proven wrong I'll maintain my analogy to horror fiction, which depends on denying information and fueling irrational states. This as opposed to science fiction, which leans toward building knowledge and leveraging it for inventive solutions. The horror recipe is all there in the Gates story, right down to the thug's demand for secrecy. Defeating the extortionist monster is a matter of tearing its fragile veil, to reveal it's a flour sack on a stick making "woo-hoo" noises.

There's a tail to the Post story below a cut line, just after the other fraud incident examples, addressing the second thought I had:

    [quote] In both instances, the scammers successfully received payoffs from the panicked parents.

    In Gates’ case, a number of curious commentators wondered how the trickster was able to imitate her mom’s voice. To that repeated query, she responded, “This guy must have researched how my mom cries [because] it sounded JUST LIKE HER CRY!!”

What itches me is that ladies Gates and Grace each give the criminals far too much credit. Someone writing for Ars Technica or LA Times or Wired wouldn't leave us hanging with unexplained threats. They'd slash past the shock and awe and try to tell us how the monster works.

The doofus in a call center begging "grandpa" for bail money can't possibly sound like every grandchild he needs to portray. Not even Frank Welker could pull off that many voices. What happens is fear distorting perception. The whole "Room 101" chapter of Orwell's 1984 is practically a case study in the tactic. The party leader as much as admits that what Smith believes under duress is arbitrary, irrelevant, and absolutely necessary for "treatment" to function. You'll make two and two equal five if it gets you out of that panic room.

Gates heard her mother wail in distress because she was supposed to and not because it happened. Conveniently for the scammer she colored the moment with ways to make the kidnap plot plausible, the sort of blank-filling we all might do in the absence of facts ... which of course she was angrily deterred from seeking.

Glancing at the NY Post's author profile, I am having trouble seeing "her signature journalistic know-how and sassy wordplay" in her primary beat, thumbing through trending clickbait and hitching her wagon to gossip. But then local and network TV news shows are just as guilty of burning 45 seconds a night on the 'video with lotsa hits' in the second-to-last segment where the traditional "human interest" piece used to go.

I've found that it's better to simply ignore the content of tabloids like the NY Post.