A new version of a common phone scam recently showed up in the northwest suburbs, and it’s again forcing police to remind locals to be vigilant of such ruses.
According to a Buffalo Grove police report, a “frantic” Prospect Heights man ran into the Buffalo Grove police station on Christmas Day, saying that kidnappers were holding his son for ransom. The man was headed to his bank to withdraw the kidnappers’ cash, and decided to stop at a nearby police station for backup.
According to the report, the 48-year-old father told the police that his 24-year-old son “called him on the phone and yelled that kidnappers were going to ‘put a bullet in my head’ if his dad did not cooperate.” That was all the father heard from the young man —a kidnapper took the phone and started giving instructions after that.
The instructions, the report said: Wire $1,000 to a man in Mexico City through Western Union, and the kidnappers would release the son.
The Buffalo Grove officers kept the father on the phone with the caller, but started feeding him questions to ask. They learned that the “kidnappers” were calling from a Jamaican phone number, which has been used in scams of this type elsewhere, the report said.
Police said they also instructed the father to ask proof-of-life questions —details that only the man’s son would know the answer to — and the criminals had no responses.
“It was determined that (the father) was being contacted as part of a scam where the offender states he has kidnapped a relative in order to get the victim to wire money,” the report reads.
The Buffalo Grove officers then started trying to contact the son directly, to be certain that he was not a captive. The father had not recently been in touch with his son, and after some initial trouble finding him, the son was located by Lake in the Hills police. The son assured his father and Buffalo Grove officials that he had not been kidnapped, police said.
The father ended up never withdrawing any money, police said. According to the report, the ruse may have simply been a burglary scheme: Motivate the man to leave his house so the “kidnappers” could break in and steal from him.
Buffalo Grove deputy police chief Roy Bethge said this was the first time his department saw a fake kidnapping permutation worked into a telephone scam. He said the criminals who work such enterprises are always trying to find new angles.
“There are all manner of scams, and this is an approach we had not seen before,” Bethge said.
Bethge urged all to be highly wary of giving out any personal information to anyone, especially Social Security numbers and dates of birth, through either the phone or email.
Twitter: @RonnieAtPioneer
