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Mexico smuggling gangs' new scam: 'virtual kidnapping'
2008-10-03
PHOENIX, Arizona (AFP) - Human smuggling gangs on the US-Mexico border are extorting thousands of dollars from families of illegal immigrants in Arizona by falsely claiming their relatives are being held hostage in a scam that has become known as "virtual kidnapping." The smugglers, known as "coyotes," try to take advantage of the time it takes an illegal alien to cross from Mexico into the United States. The trend began about a year ago, according to officials with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and has escalated into one case per week. "We're at the point now where it's almost a weekly occurrence," said Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of investigations for the Arizona office of ICE. "'We have them, you owe us money, if you don't pay us money, we're going to harm them,'" Allen said the gangs tell relatives. "Obviously family members are very motivated by that." Illegal immigrants arriving at the border are frequently robbed by smugglers, who obtain phone numbers of their relatives. They then call families from Mexico on a disposable cell phone with a Phoenix area code and threaten them. The relatives rarely call law enforcement, and instead often pay the smugglers. In one case a family paid 4,000 dollars, then called ICE when they heard nothing more. In many cases the would-be migrant never left Mexico, or was caught by the US Border Patrol. One phony kidnap victim had been dead in the desert south of Phoenix for weeks while extortionists scammed her relatives. "In the end, like the lottery, there's no alien there," Allen said. "They're just stringing people along to get some money out of them." Allen told AFP the dollar value of human smuggling is "in the range of what's made every year on illicit drugs." Because of its post on the main smuggling corridor on the Southwest border, ICE deals with 150 to 200 kidnappings per year in the Phoenix area. As more and more virtual kidnappings happen, law enforcement officials are becoming more adept at finding out which gang actually has kidnapped someone and which has not. Undercover agents either want to talk to the alien undercover or talk to a family member who has received a proof of life call. Sometimes agents recognize the phone number as one which has been used before in a phony kidnapping. "We want to be able to be able to assure ourselves the smuggling organization actually has the alien," Allen said. "That's the challenge the smugglers can't overcome. They don't really have the person. They refuse or stall or find ways to not make the alien available to their family members or us in an undercover capacity." Workers used to pass frequently across the border to work seasonally. As the border has become more secure, and smugglers have been hindered and violent competition has arisen between gangs. Drug gangs and human smuggling organizations coordinate their efforts at times, Allen said. In the bleak western Arizona desert, a human smuggling operation might send people ahead of a load of drugs to draw away the Border Patrol. "There's a lot of money to be made smuggling both humans and drugs across the border, and smuggling operations invest a lot of time and money and effort to counter the law enforcement presence on the border every day," Allen said. "Smuggled aliens have been killed in front of other aliens to prove a point and to get cooperation from other aliens in a smuggling load. If you look back five or ten years ago, that never would have happened." People trying to cross the border illegally "often do not realize what they are putting themselves into," Allen said.
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