SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio mother was in panic and distress while on the phone with a caller, who claimed he’d taken her daughter and would kill her unless a ransom was paid.
However, the young girl was never in any actual danger. As it turns out, the call was all a scam.
The incident all started just seconds after Colleen Glass’s daughter didn’t answer her phone, when an incoming call came in from Mexico.
It was a call that Glass said she normally wouldn’t answer. But, with her child so close to the border visiting South Padre Island at the time, she picked up.
“Mom, some guys took me out in a van and I’m scared,” the caller said to Glass through the phone.
“Then, this man came on the line and said, ‘We have your daughter, and if you don’t do exactly what we say, you won’t see her again. We will kill her,’” Glass said.
Through trembling and tears, the young woman on the phone’s voice sounded just like her daughter’s, according to Glass. She begged them to put her daughter back on the line.
“They said, ‘No, you can either talk to her now or you can see her again, but not both,’” said Glass.
According to Glass, she was then asked how much money she had in her bank account and was instructed to go pull it all out. Once she did that, they’d tell her how to get it in the hands of their associates.
“Anytime I would lapse into a silence, he would say, ‘What are you doing right now? You have to tell me every second. What are you doing right now?’” Glass recalled.
Glass spent 20 minutes on the phone with the scam caller, terrified. She would even go as far as starting her car and acting as if she was driving to the bank to keep them happy.
Before finally, a family member got ahold of her daughter. That’s when Glass hung up the phone.
Although no money was stolen from her, Glass said she’s now lost her sense of security.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever really recover from it. It’s going to be hard for me to let her go anywhere because they’re very good at what they did. They really made me believe,” Glass said.
Glass said she hopes her story will warn other parents of this kidnapping scam call. She has since filed a police report.
San Antonio police urge anyone who gets a similar scam call to contact them as soon as possible.
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