Don't fall for this one

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On Friday, I had a horrible scare. The worst of my life, probably. I got a phone call on my cell phone. It sounded like Dearra. All I could hear was something like "these guys put me in a van and I don't know what they're going to do". She said that twice. It was really fuzzy and when I asked a question, a man's voice came on. He said, "we have your family member, and if you don't do what we say, we'll kill her". He said a lot more, and I don't remember it all, but he started interrogating me about how much money I could come up with. I lied and gave a low number. He instructed me to stay on the phone, talk to nobody, make no calls, and go to the bank and pull the money out. He wanted to know how far away the bank was, and I lied again and said 20 - 30 minutes, depending on traffic. I then tried to text Tony to see if Dearra was home, but my hands were shaking so badly that I typoed it, and he didn't understand what I was asking. I also instant messaged a co-worker what was happening, asked him to call police. Told him what bank I was going to and gave him my cell and Dearra's cell. Then I left. They were periodically asking for updates on the phone. "Are you driving yet?" "How close are you to the bank?" "What road are you on?" "What kind of car are you driving?" Remember, at this point I was still convinced it had been Dearra on the phone. That's when they made their big mistake. They asked me if I was near Sherman Way or Roscoe Blvd. so they could figure out where to meet me. Now the area code on my cell phone is still a So. Cal. area code, but I live in northern California now. So at that point, I decided they were probably scamming me, and instead of driving to the bank and figuring out how to tip off the police, I decided to drive home. Meanwhile, corporate security called me. My co-worker had decided to go to them. They informed me that I would have to call the police myself, as they didn't have my daughter's name, description, etc. I didn't bother explaining why I couldn't get off the phone with the bad guys, just said "fine", as I had already decided it was probably a scam anyway. Then my boss called, and I told her it was probably a scam, that I was driving home to see, and hung up. The bad guys were on the other line wondering why I hadn't been answering them. I told them my boss had called, and I had told her I had a personal emergency. They told me not to take any more calls. So I drove home, keeping them updated on how long it would take me to get to the "bank", pulled into the driveway, saw Tony, asked him if Dearra was inside (her car was across the street). He said yeah, and as the bad guys were asking what was going on, I ran inside, saw she was ok, and lay down on the floor. Also, I hung up the phone. I called my boss and told her it was for sure a scam. The baddies were trying to call me back. I called the police. They were pretty useless. First I was told that since my family was OK, get off the 911 line, and call on the regular line. I did that and ended up talking to the exact same person, who said she couldn't help me because the call originated in Rancho Cordova. She said I should call either the police or sheriff there, she didn't know which one had jurisdiction. Ugh, useless. So I hugged Dearra, hugged Tony ,and drove back to work as I had a report that was due. On the way back, they kept calling me. I finally picked up, and the guy said "we have a problem". "Yes, you do", I said. "My family is fine, and you can go f* yourself", and hung up. They kept calling, so I turned my phone off. Back at work I told everybody it was a scam, did my report, and Googled the scam. Beaucoup articles about it, including this one in the Guardian: In one of the articles, it said to call your local FBI office, so I did that. She took a report, and gave me a number for the FTC - just in case they called back and gave me a phone number I should call that number and report it. Unfortunately, every time they called it came over as "private number". I posted the Guardian article on Facebook that night, and my sister reminded me that my dad had gotten a similar call about her son, but he had had the presence of mind to ask a question that tricked them, so he could confirm it was a scam. These guys, however, refused to answer questions or put "Dearra" back on. I tell you, when you really believe that somebody has your child, it is the most overwhelming panic. You can't think straight, you can't anything. Even the things I tried to do to alert people backfired on me. Thank God it wasn't real. There is a special circle in hell for people who do things like this.