'Kidnapping' Scammer Targets King County Parents

WOODINVILLE, WA - Last Thursday, a woman in the Ravensdale area east of Maple Valley got a strange phone call after dropping her daughter off at school.

The number was blocked, but the woman answered anyway. A man with an accent who knew the woman's first name said that he had kidnapped her daughter. He demanded money - or else.

I'm going to "kill the child," the man told the woman, according to the King County Sheriff's Office.

The threat turned out to be phony. The caller was only pretending to be a kidnapper, but if that's not bad enough, he somehow knew the woman's name, phone number, and that her daughter had been dropped off at school.

According to the King County Sheriff's Office, the same man with an accent has been calling parents around King County claiming to have kidnapped a child. What happened in Ravensdale happened again this week to a father in White Center south of Seattle. In that case, a woman caller pretended to be the man's daughter. In both instances, the children were OK and safe in school.

Police are warning locals not to give in to this scam. If you get a similar call, report it to 911.

"The parents did the right thing in these instances, confirmed with the school their kids were OK and called 911 to report it," Woodinville police wrote in a Facebook post this week.

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