In an effort to foil criminals who have taken advantage of the recent climate of fear in the lakeside area to prey on unwary residents, leaders of the Chapala Security Initiative (CSI) and police department chief Reynol Contreras lined up a June 1 orientation session to educate the public on the ins and outs of telephone extortion scams.
The featured speaker was Guillermo Castan, an expert on the topic from Jalisco’s Public Security Ministry. He outlined the various modus operandi and wily psychological tactics crooks commonly employ to con people into paying hefty sums of cash to retrieve bogus contest prizes, get relatives out of trumped up troubles with the authorities or shell out “ransoms” for fake kidnappings.
Extortionists commonly use harsh language to instill panic and get the upper hand. A pattern recognized in recent incidents at lakeside involves a caller identifying himself as a member of the Zeta cartel who claims to be holding a close relative. He threatens to hack up the captive unless a negotiated sum is deposited into banking accounts set up in business enterprises such as Soriana, Coppel and Banca Azteca.
In contrast, Castan said, the victims of real kidnapping cases are usually wealthy people and most often there is a witness to the abduction.Many of the calls have been tracked to area codes 883 (Tamaulipas), 5583 (Mexico City) and 47 (Guanajuato). Other calls appear to originate from Nextel mobile phones that register on caller ID devices as numero privado (private number).
People targeted in these scams are advised to avoid answering calls that come from these exchanges or hang up as soon as a threat is launched. Report at once to the local police who will provide full guidance. If the caller continues ringing the number, take the phone off the hook.
The presentation included playback of a real life recording as a sample of how the telephone threats work. To illustrate just how adept the extortionists can be, Castan cited the case of a woman from Ciudad Guzman who coughed up 75,000 pesos to free her daughter from captivity. It turned out that the victim was childless.
Although Castan had come to Chapala on three prior occasions to give conferences on the same topic, the latest event pulled the biggest crowd yet, with foreign residents outnumbering Mexicans about five to one.