Scam callers claiming your child has been kidnapped. Is this occurring in LA,too?

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LAGUNA NIGUEL – It’s been two months, and Kathie Gross is still rattled by what she calls the “most terrifying experience” of her life.

The 49-year-old mother had just left a spin class at Monarch Bay Plaza and was driving home on Crown Valley Parkway when her cellphone rang.

She answered and heard what she thought was her daughter Jordan’s terrified voice: “Mom, Mom! They took me and these men put me in a van.”

Her heart racing, Gross gripped the steering wheel and sped down the rain-slicked road, heading toward St. Mary’s School in Aliso Viejo, where her daughter was in the sixth grade.

“Oh my God. Jordan! Where are you?” she screamed into the phone.

Then a man said, “Is this Kathie Gross?”

He continued, “Listen, Missy, you better not call anyone. My guys have got him.”

That last word – “him” – gave Gross the courage to hang up and call St. Mary’s. She reached the main office and for the next 15 minutes waited as staff tried to locate her 12-year-old daughter.

“Now, I’m on Alicia (Parkway) driving like I could have killed 20 people and I’m still on hold with the school,” Gross said earlier this week. “On the other line, I keep getting ‘no-caller ID’ calls coming in. At one point, I’m thinking I’m having a heart attack. With screeching wheels, I finally make it to the school and they came out and said they had her.”

The “virtual kidnap” incident, which occurred April 19, is among a recent spate reported to police agencies in coastal and south Orange County. Law enforcement has seen the number of reported incidents rise in coastal communities throughout Southern California in the past three months.

Nationwide, the FBI – which investigates the scams in tandem with local law enforcement agencies – says the schemes, which are prosecuted as violent acts, affect hundreds of people each year. Agents began opening cases within the past five years and prosecuted their first case in 2015.

On Tuesday, June 19, the FBI issued a warning to the public: “Residents of Orange County, CA, are reporting threatening phone calls during which they were told to wire money or else their loved one would be in harm’s way. Learn to protect yourself from virtual kidnapping schemes, a crime affecting U.S. communities

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