Rocky Hill Police Thwart Kidnapping Ransom Scam

ROCKY HILL, CT — Rocky Hill police are warning the public about a kidnapping scam after an incident on Friday.

That day, police received a call from Citizens Bank on the Silas Deane Highway reporting that a woman handed a teller a note stating her son had been kidnapped, according to a report

When police arrived at the bank, the woman was speaking on her cellular phone with a man who claimed to have kidnapped her son, according to a report. The man was demanding that she withdraw a sum of money or her son would be killed, police said.

The caller appeared to know "limited personal information about the victim’s son, but enough to make the call believable to the victim," police said.

The caller also put someone on the phone claiming to be the woman’s son, police said.

Officers guided the woman through the call to draw "further information" from the man and, through a school resource officer from another jurisdiction, it was determined that the victim’s son was present at his school and had not been kidnapped, according to a report.

Police said the caller was a scammer trying to coerce the woman to wire ransom money. The man seems to have used a "spoofed" phone number and was calling from outside the immediate area and possibly outside the country, police said.

Photo Credit: Chris Dehnel

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