‘Leave town’ kidnap scam targets family
Print Edition
A FAMILY were targeted by an elaborate scam that saw the daughter persuaded to leave Shanghai and her mother told her child had been kidnapped, Minhang Police said yesterday.
The mother, surnamed Yang, received a call at 2:30pm on July 8 from what seemed her daughter’s number.
A stranger told Yang that her daughter, surnamed Wang, had been kidnapped and that she must pay a ransom of 300,000 yuan (US$48,330) to a bank account.
When Yang tried to contact her daughter, her phone was turned off, so around an hour later she alerted police.
Police were suspicious as the number that called Wang while almost matching her daughter’s number had an extra “0” at the beginning.
This is a common feature of scam calls made using malware that can change the calling number so that the recipient thinks it’s from someone they know, said officers.
Police repeatedly called Wang’s number and finally made contact with her at a coach station in Changshu City in Jiangsu Province at 4pm.
Wang told police that she had received a strange call earlier, claiming she was listed as wanted for money laundering as several ID cards registered in her name had been found in a delivery package.
She said her caller seemed plausible as he knew her name, so she followed his instructions concerning this and switched off her phone and traveled to Changshu.
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