Imagine a loved one receiving a phone call that appears to be from your phone, and when answered a stranger’s voice says that you’ve been kidnapped and threatens your life unless a ransom is given. Just such a scam has been reported by multiple women on the Kenai Peninsula over the weekend.
A woman who preferred to remain anonymous said on Saturday, October 13, the scam started with a phone call to the Kenai woman’s brother-in-law, with a person saying saying “he’s with me and he’s kidnapped me and going to rape” and kill her unless the brother-in-law brought a ransom to a store. The brother-in-law quickly texted his brother while he was still on the phone with the scammer to see if his wife was with him. After finding out that she was safe, he hung up on the scammer. Soon the scammer called the husband’s number with the same story. Both calls appeared to originate from the woman’s phone.
She said in an email conversation with KSRM that the whole ordeal left her feeling “Helpless and violated. I felt that even though I knew it’s just a phone call, I couldn’t help watching over my shoulder all night even in the grocery store!”
Once her brother-in-law had hung up on the scammer, he contacted the woman and her husband to tell them what had happened. She says the whole ordeal has left her with so many questions she didn’t know where to start: how did the scammer make it look like the call was coming from her phone? How did they find out who her close family members were? Has the scammer somehow hacked her phone?
The woman immediately reported the incident to the Alaska State Troopers but says she “didn’t feel reassured at all” when they said the crime was out of their jurisdiction and referred her to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
After posting her story on Facebook to let friends and family know that she was alright, in case the scammer targeted anyone else, the woman said two other people contacted her saying it had happened to them and their families too.
She said, “I’ve heard from a few people who had it happen to family that it’s totally random but it doesn’t feel random when they call your family.”
Public Information Officers with the Alaska State Troopers and Anchorage’s FBI Office said they are looking into the incident.
The same scam hit families in Anchorage this summer and has been reported across the U.S.