Virtual kidnapping for ransom is on the rise

Next he told her to download and use the app for Zelle, another P2P provider. She sent three more payments. At his behest, she typed in "rent" as the rationale for the money. After

she insisted, "That's all I can afford," the perpetrator hung up. The ordeal was all over in 20 minutes. Or so she thought. TWO SISTERS, TWO SCAMS When she tracked down her

sister by phone, she was stunned. Though her younger sister was safe, simultaneously she had fallen victim to the scam and sent a strange caller P2P payments totaling $700, ostensibly to

ensure the 34-year-old's safety. "It was a similar story line, similar background noises," the older sibling says, only her younger sister's "kidnapper" lacked

a Southern drawl. Reports of virtual kidnappings have surfaced elsewhere in California as well as in Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey,

New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, Virginia and Texas, news accounts show. In 2017, the FBI said law enforcement had been aware of the scam for at least two decades — and that U.S.

residents anywhere could be victims. While the FBI declined last week to disclose statistics, a bureau official said last year the schemes were on the rise. He spoke after a Houston woman,

35, was sentenced to seven years and four months in federal prison for extorting money from parents who were told their children were kidnapped and would be raped and murdered. The case of

the two sisters shows how miscreants highjack multiple technologies in their cruel chase for cash. One technology is caller ID spoofing, which is widely used by crooks, some part of criminal

organizations, to alter what shows up on caller ID. They may hide behind area codes and prefixes a potential victim knows. Some crooks use government phone numbers. Even the FBI has warned

that its phone number had been spoofed by imposters demanding money or personal data. The other technology involves the lightning-quick digital payments linked to your bank accounts. And in

the case of the sisters, voice-changing tech and simulated background noises seem to have been in the crooks' bag of tricks. In September, the FBI in Texas said multiple law enforcement

agencies there had seen a rise virtual-kidnapping victims in the Rio Grande Valley who were defrauded out of large sums of money. Some perpetrators said they were in a drug cartel; others

cast themselves as "corrupt" law enforcement personnel, an advisory said. Often bad actors use accomplices and try to instill "fear, panic and urgency" to rush victims

into a "very hasty decision," the advisory said. Many perpetrators are outside the U.S. "making hundreds of phone calls, possibly using phone directories or other phone

lists," it said.