So there I was at work, minding my own business when at 7:52AM I get a NO CALLER ID call on my cell phone. A voice says “Mark Paz?” and I say “yes”. Next I hear a woman speaking Spanish in tears saying “do what they say”. Next a male gets on the phone and in Spanish tells me to “get the money, or a family member dies”. I reply in English asking who this is, who they are calling for, and what is going on. I am quite sure this is a scam so I play along. The caller switches to English with a heavy accent and tells me that unless I get the money, he will kill a family member. I ask him which family member he is referring to, and he says “your f****** daughter”. At this point I know he is lying and I start to string him along. I keep him on the phone for at least 45 mins waiting for security mgmt. to come in. I delay him by telling him I have to ask my wife first before going to the bank and pulling out all the money. He starts to argue. Then I tell him I just can’t walk away from work. This upsets the caller so he puts his “boss” on. The boss wants to know which bank I use, so I tell him it’s a credit union on a military base. That confused him and he puts the first guy back on the phone to have him explain it. I heard them speaking Spanish in the background. He tells me I better get going. I tell him I am leaving, but have to catch the elevator down to the fourth underground level in the garage and will probably drop the call. They didn’t know how to handle that and threatened my “daughter” more. I turn off the microphone and keep them on the line. One of our guys gets SJPD on the phone. They say that since I do NOT have a daughter, they weren’t going to do anything about it. They said it’s a scam. Now it’s time to end the call. So I get back on the phone and say, “Hello kidnappers,…I just spoke to my daughter, and she’s alright, Are you sure you have the right Mark Paz?” They reply “F**** You” and hang up.
Somehow they got my name and number off some list. Since Mark Paz is a common Hispanic name so they thought they could shake me down, make me go to the bank, pull out money and send it to them.
The most enjoyable part was keeping them on the phone, and stretching it out. If you know me and know how I think, you can imagine how much fun I had. When I told them I couldn’t leave work they asked “What’s more important, your job or your family?” I replied “Well I took this job so I’d have health care for my family, so what does that tell you?” When I told them I had to let my wife know I was taking all the money out, he got all upset and yelled, “Why does your wife have to know?” So I told him “She has the ATM card”.
All of this before 9:00am.