Kidnapping

[Ewok85]

I live in Adelaide, Australia, capital of the state of South Australia. Fairly quiet place, we release the likes of Layton Hewitt onto the unsuspecting world and the sort. Close to the ocean, population of about 800,000 in the city and surrounding metro area 50k's in all directions.

So my girlfriend is from Tokyo, here alone studying at uni and living in a dorm.

She gets a call from her mum who is in Japan, sounding really panicy - she had received a call from some gang who had claimed to have kidnapped this girl, Rika, and wanted a ransom of 20万円. They even went as far as to have some girl pretend to be Rika on the phone.

Her mum freaked and phoned rika here in Aus straight away, lucky she was home or things would have really really gotten out of hand.

Now her mum is very worried and im kinda dazed and confused as to what happened (and rika for that matter). Sounds like someone has noticed the lack of rika at home and decided to bluff their way into making some easy money. Doubt they really know where she is, or even if they do know where in Adelaide (shes moving out of the dorm into a spare room attached to a house with all the bits, kitchen, bathroom etc soon).

Any feedback?

 

[PopCulturePooka]

This is a new scam sweeping Japan.

Yakuza call older people and pretend to be either their children, grand children or someone who knows them and uses a vareity of lies to try and extort money.

A student of mine told me how she recieved a call from someone claiming to be her son (who is a doctor). The person told her that he was her son and that he was in serious legal trouble over med malpractice and needed money fast. She even spoke to her sons hospitals 'director'.

She knew something was suspect as her son didn't use some words the guy on the phone was saying.

So she called her son. He knew nothing at all about what she was saying.

Its all fraud.

 

[okaeri_man]

dude, we live in adelaide, the murder capital of australia. kidnapping? an easy bluff to call...

well i could say more but it would all be morbid humour...

 

[Ewok85]

Yeah, a few cases come to mind regarding murders (remember that girl along the obahn?)... not a word mentioned to rika or co cause that would not be fun :|

But yeah, sounds like that fraud alright. I've read about it on japan times a while back, seems that its rather common.

 

[MeAndroo]

Yeah, I don't think it's new, or solely utilized by the yakuza. People are far too trusting in Japan, especially the elderly. I remember hearing some ridiculous number like 60 million yen being stolen through this method in a year.

 

[Ewok85]

22million is the record in one go apparently....

 

[Nuala]

22million is the record in one go apparently....

I'll break that record so easily..

 

[TwistedMac]

22million is the record in one go apparently....

officially...
some people don't want to look the fool... really bad