the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Glen Rock NJ, on Thursday July 20th at 8:26 PM a Glen Rock resident reported to the Glen Rock Police that she was contacted by an unknown person who told her that he was holding her daughter hostage and demanded $5,000 to let her go, which is a common phone scam. The victim was able to contact her son to verify that her daughter was OK and did not lose any money as a result of the attempted scam.
Common scenarios for this type of scam include:
- A grandparent receives a phone call (or sometimes an e-mail) from a “grandchild.” If it is a phone call, it’s often late at night or early in the morning when most people aren’t thinking that clearly. Usually, the person claims to be traveling in a foreign country and has gotten into a bad situation, like being arrested for drugs, getting in a car accident, or being mugged…and needs money wired ASAP. And the caller doesn’t want his or her parents told.
- Sometimes, instead of the “grandchild” making the phone call, the criminal pretends to be an arresting police officer, a lawyer, a doctor at a hospital, or some other person. And we’ve also received complaints about the phony grandchild talking first and then handing the phone over to an accomplice…to further spin the fake tale.
- We’ve also seen military families victimized: after perusing a soldier’s social networking site, a con artist will contact the soldier’s grandparents, sometimes claiming that a problem came up during military leave that requires money to address.
- While it’s commonly called the grandparent scam, criminals may also claim to be a family friend, a niece or nephew, or another family member.
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We changed my father’s telephone number (he had the same number since 1962) and forwarded it to my brother’s home in South Carolina.
Lots of calls from India.