Rowdy Gaines warns of kidnapping phone scam
| Orlando Sentinel
Olympic swimmer and Central Florida native Rowdy Gaines and his wife, Judy, got a horrifying call from their daughter's phone number last Saturday. The man on the phone said he had kidnapped their daughter Madison Gaines, and was going to hurt her if he didn't pay up. Rowdy Gaines could even hear his daughter's panicked voice on the line.
At the same time Madison Gaines, who lives in Colorado, was getting calls from someone who said she was with her local police department. The woman on the phone said there was a warrant for Madison's arrest, and that she had to sign a statement and pay a fee or risk going to jail. The woman knew Madison's father was an Olympic swimmer, and Madison Gaines heard his voice calling her name, she said.
As it turns out, the family was the target of a scam.
Rowdy Gaines, vice president of aquatics for YMCA of Central Florida, took to his Facebook this week and went on the “Today” show with his wife and to warn others.
“I know what many of you are thinking, you're thinking ‘Madison, you're stupid,' or like, ‘why would you do that?'” Madison Gaines said in an hour-long Facebook Live stream explaining the ordeal. “But I was so emotionally trapped. And I've always told people, don't fall for scams, you know, hang up on these people. But I was so manipulated. I was so manipulated from these people that I like — I wanted to do whatever it took.” daughter
Phone scams can take different forms. Some scammers tell victims they did something wrong, like failing to pay their taxes, missing jury duty or a court appearance, or being late on their utility bill. Others say a victim's loved one is in trouble, in a car crash or a kidnapping.
But they typically end the same way: Asking the terrified victim to pay a fee by going to a store, loading a pre-paid debit card or a gift card up with money, and reading the card number over the phone to the scammer. “In most cases, the best course of action is to hang up the phone,” said Master Deputy Ingrid Tejada-Monforte, an Orange County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman. “If you engage the caller, don't confirm or acknowledge your loved one's name or any personal information. Attempt to contact the ‘kidnapped' victim via phone, text, or social media, and request they call back from their own cell phone.”
Anyone who suspects a real kidnapping has happened should immediately call 911, Tejada-Monforte said. Do not send the callers money, she said.
This scam used caller ID spoofing, a method to make calls from one number look like they're coming from another. That's why Madison Gaines said her phone showed the Colorado Springs Police Department's number, and her mother's phone showed Madison's number, complete with the photo her mother had saved with her contact information.
The scammer who called Madison Gaines did not ask for money right away, she said. The woman on the phone said Madison Gaines had missed a court date the previous week and pretended she wanted to help her resolve the issue, she said.
When Madison Gaines told her she didn't have any court dates, the woman said she had missed a grand jury appearance and told Madison Gaines that she had committed a crime, Madison Gaines said.
The woman told Madison Gaines to leave the class she was in and go to an address to sign a sworn statement. But the address was for a Wal-Mart nearby, and when Madison got there the woman said she needed to put money on a pre-paid card to pay off a fee, and that the money would be returned to her once she signed the statement, Madison said.
Madison Gaines said she put $550 on various prepaid cards in different stores, and that money is gone.
Back in Florida, Judy Gaines got a call that looked like it was from Madison.
“A man on the other line started swearing and said he was going to cut her [Madison's] throat and kill himself unless I did exactly what we were told,” Rowdy Gaines wrote on his Facebook page. “It became an out of body experience for me. … The man yelled at one point to someone in the background to ‘stop hitting her.' He went from being calm to flat out crazed on the phone.”
She gave the phone to her husband, who said the scammer told him to go to a Winn-Dixie and get prepaid cards to pay a ransom. Rowdy Gaines said he demanded to speak with his daughter to make sure she was OK. That's when the callers connected the two lines, and Rowdy and Madison could hear each other's voices on the line.
Rowdy and Judy Gaines called authorities and did not send the scammers any money, but said the incident was a cautionary tale.
“I am so embarrassed about this as I'm the first one to hang up on scams but this was an entirely new level because the call came from daughters phone,” Rowdy Gaines wrote on his Facebook page. “And if you're a parent I think you know what I mean. The hackers obviously were able to do that.”