Scammers target with fake hostage calls

ALMIRA — Scammers are using fake hostage situations to demand money, preying on fear and targeting vulnerable individuals.

A local woman reported receiving a call from an unknown number with a 253 area code. When she answered, she heard a young woman screaming.

“I got a call, and it was a girl screaming, saying, ‘Mommy, help me! Mommy, mommy, mommy!’ She was inconsolable,” Cathy Florenzen said. “I could sense it was not my daughter because she has never called me ‘mommy’ in her life.”

Florenzen handed the phone to her husband, but the unknown female caller continued sobbing. A man then got on the line and claimed they had her daughter.

“He asked if I was Kaitlyn’s mother,” Florenzen said. “He said they were drug dealers, had a gun to her head, had picked her up on the side of the road and told me she was in danger. They told me they wanted money.”

Florenzen questioned the caller, asking where they had taken her daughter and in what state.

“He had a thick accent. The woman crying had a thick accent, too,” she said. “I kind of laughed and asked what state he had picked her up in, and he hung up.”

She immediately called her daughter, who confirmed she was safe.

“I asked her if she was in the back of a drug dealer’s car. She said no,” Florenzen said.

She reported the call to law enforcement, but the phone number was disconnected by the time she tried to call it back. Police reportedly told her they would document the report but said such scams are difficult to trace.

Florenzen, who lives in Almira, believes scammers are targeting older individuals.

“I know they are targeting older people,” she said. “My mother got one for my son, and she fell for it.”

The scammers did not specify how much money they wanted. Florenzen said she tried to keep them talking to gather more information.

“They were hoping that I was not that together,” she said. “But I knew immediately it wasn’t my daughter. If she needed help, she would keep it together. She wouldn’t be calling me—she would call her husband.”

Author Bio

Olivia Harnack, Managing Editor

Olivia Harnack is the award-winning managing editor/photographer/videographer/columnist at the Lincoln County Record-Times, with offices in both Davenport and Odessa, Wash. She is a University of Idaho graduate and a U.S. Army National Guardsman.