There is a new wrinkle in what has become a national sport in a number of Latin American countries — kidnapping. The new fear is of “virtual kidnapping” which is becoming more prevalent in the normally crime ridden countries like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Guatemala.
The usually violent, seldom solved (or rescued) crime is now also the fear-laden version of spam and phishing. Even Latino criminals are going digital. A news story about the new scheme started with the story of an office machine repairman in Mexico City who received a call on his cell with a child’s cry and a “Honey, it’s me, I’ve been kidnapped!”
Rodolfo Melchor called the cops and raced home. After those tense minutes to get to his family, he found that they were fine. He had managed to avoid being one of the new victims of “virtual kidnapping” where ransoms are collected without the criminals actually taking anyone (or, as is often the case in these societies, taking their lives) or handling weapons. It is a fiendish and dangerous scam far more worrisome than identity theft or those little notes from Nigerian bank officers who can’t wait to give away those lost millions.
A Guatemalan prison spokesman was quoted as saying “They make them believe they know everything they do, where their children study, where they work and all their daily movements.”
Many or most of these crimes do not become part of the statis
tics because the police note them as robberies or assaults since no one was really kidnapped. Many victims do not report the crime because, in these third world countries, “police are often unresponsive, inept or corrupt.” Many are too embarrassed at having fallen for a scam.
It is noted that this virtual version of the crime and kidnapping for real are a big business. Sao Paulo state in Brazil reported three thousand virtual kidnaps between the first of the year and 14 February. Mexico (a citizens’ group who used polling for their results) estimated 36,295 kidnappings in their country during 2004. They have not published newer figures yet.
There is also the fact that the world’s leading countries for kidnapping are Mexico, Haiti and Columbia. The victim’s family often do not report the crime because of the total lack of faith in their countries’ “authorities”.
“The mother of one Mexico City man missing since June 2005 embarrassed police by carrying out her own detective work that led to several arrests, and then paid for billboards offering rewards for information on other alleged kidnappers.”
This might be considered a bit of silliness with ransoms running $600 to $1200 in Guatemala and $50 to “the thousands” in Mexico. It is not silly, not spam. The office machine repairman did not pay the money. His family was unharmed. He was put under intense pressure and, when he reached his home, the police had gotten confused and told his wife that he had been kidnapped and she was hysterical with worry.
In Argentina at least one man died from a heart attack. He had paid $1000 to virtual kidnappers who purported to have taken his son.
Since many of these scams are run from prisons in Mexico and Guatemala, those countries have banned cell phones in prisons and tried to jam signals. Mexico set up a system to alert people when they are getting a call from a prison pay phone. However, given the traditional corruption of both police and prison workers, it would be unlikely that this ban would actually work.
