A Johns Creek mother says she is shaken after a scammer used a screaming child in the background of a phone call.
The 54-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified, told Channel 2 Action News the scammer called from an international area code and asked for her by name.
He told her he’d kidnapped her middle school-aged daughter, whose name he knew, and had her in a van.
The mother could hear a child screaming, “I’m really scared, Mom” in the background of the call, according to a police report.
“My hands were shaking, my heart was pounding and I could see how easy it would be for someone to say, ‘Sure, I'll do whatever you want,’” the mother told the news station.
But the call came Sept. 13 when students were home from school due to what was then Tropical Storm Irma, so the woman’s daughter was in the house.
As soon as she walked upstairs and saw her daughter, the woman hung up the phone and called police, which is exactly what Johns Creek Police Captain Chris Byers said she should have done.
“I ran up to her bedroom and she was right there,” the woman said. “And as soon as I saw her I said, ‘Thank you, Jesus’ and I hung up the phone.”
She was most concerned because the call came from an area code in Mexico near where the family owns a condo.
Police advised the mother to call the FCC and the FBI.
Byers told Channel 2 the caller probably got basic information off social media.
“Lock it down. Protect it. Be very careful what you say,” he said. “Be very limited about what you say about your kids. Where they go to school, posting pictures of them at their schools and things of that nature.”
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