The Terrifying Kidnapping Hoax

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about the crying teenager hoax.  This is a scam in which a young person calls you in tears and pretends to be your child or grandchild.  They are crying so hard that it is difficult to make out what they are saying.  However, it is clear that they need you to wire them money right away in order to solve their problem.

You can see that article here:  http://lies-and-liars.blogspot.com/2012/06/crying-teenager-phone-hoax.html

Now the scammers have stepped up the intensity of the calls to make them even more terrifying, so people are much more likely to rush to the bank and wire the money to the caller as quickly as possible.

It is called the Kidnapping Hoax.

These people have dropped to a new low.

Instead of a crying teenager, you get an ominous phone call from a person who claims to have kidnapped your child or grandchild and threatens to kill them if you do not send them money quickly.  In the background, you can hear what sounds like a child's voice crying and screaming "help me" or "don't hurt me."  Sometimes there are sounds that indicate the child is being beaten.  From what I have been told, the phone calls are truly heart-rending.

You can imagine how much your adrenalin would kick in if you received a phone call like this.  It would be hard to think straight.

Don't fall victim to this hoax.  If you EVER think someone you love may have been kidnapped, call the police.  Don't try to handle anything like this on your own.

Once you get the police involved, immediately write down everything you can remember about the call ... the phone number that showed up on your caller ID, any background noises you heard, whether the caller sounded like a man or woman, whether the teen voice in the background sounded like it was male or female, etc.

In addition, you will want to call all your relatives and, without alarming them, confirm that they are all OK.  You can even tell them that you received a "strange call" that you suspect was a wrong number, but you wanted to make sure it was not from them.  Doing this will put your mind at ease that your loved ones are alright, until the police can take over.

Do NOT wire money to these people.  It will only encourage them to keep committing this fraud and making these terrifying phone calls to other potential victims.

The only way to truly stop this type of crime is when people stop falling for it.

You are reading from the blog:  http://lies-and-liars.blogspot.com

Photo credit:  www.morguefile.com

Teens Fall for Instagram Comments Scam

Have you heard about Instagram Comments Scam?  Recently I saw a report about the frightening danger posed by those ads you occasionally see in the comments section of various articles that you read online.  They are particularly prevalent under the celebrity photos that are shown on Instagram, prompting authorities to call it the Instagram Comments Scam, but the same idea applies to other sites, as well. 

You know the ads that I am referring to ... the ones that advertise things like: "you can earn $2000 to $10,000 in a few minutes" by contacting the phone number that they give you.

The "Good Morning America" segment on which I saw on this story demonstrated exactly what happens if you make that phone call.

Apparently, the person will tell you to purchase a few of the reload packs that people use to reload pre-paid debit cards with cash.  Then, they explain that you should give them the security pin number on the back of the reload packs and, in return, they will hack into the company computer system and add "zero's" to the amount of the reload pack.  In other words, they will add a zero to a $200 card and make it worth $2000.  Of course this is illegal, but apparently teens, in particular, have been tempted by the idea of quick cash and have fallen victim to this scam.

Unfortunately, once the scammer has the security pin number, the criminal can simply steal all the money you have on the card.  They are more than happy to take your $200.

To make matter worse, they know that the majority of people who fall for this scam will never report it, because they don't want to admit that they were trying to cheat the reload card company.  So most of the time the financial loss remains a secret.

Estimates are that teens are falling for this type of fraud by the thousands.

This is a really frightening scam.  Don't be the next victim and don't let your teenager fall for it, either.  Make sure they know that this is illegal and that the person most likely to be hurt is not some "anonymous corporation," as they think.  The teens themselves are the ones most likely to end up losing money in this fraud!

I also feel that sites like Instagram need to do a better job of policing the comments that are left.  Any comments like this should be automatically deleted and the writers should be banned from the site.  Site owners have a responsibility to not let known scams flourish on their sites.

Source: "Good Morning America," ABC television network, August 20, 2014.

You are reading from the blog:  http://lies-and-liars.blogspot.com

Photo credit:  Morguefile