Relatives of missing persons receive e-mails promising information
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JEFFERSON CITY -- Most of us can spot an e-mail scam, and know enough to press delete.
But hitting that delete button can be hard to do if the scammer is promising information you've been wishing and praying for.
That’s what happened to at least two mid-Missourians who received e-mails asking for thousands of dollars in return for information about their missing relatives.
KRCG contacted the FBI in Kansas City. A spokesperson says although this is a twist on a familiar scam, he’s never seen anything like this before.
Peggy Florence has been looking for her daughter, Jasmine Haslag, for more than a year.
She’s even built a Web site showcasing Jasmine and other missing Missourians.
She’s always hoping for tips, so when she got an e-mail ten days ago telling her that "Jasmine is being held by a serial rapist-kidnapper.”
“My heart stopped,” says Florence. “I was like oh my God. So I real quick got on my i-phone and e-mailed him back."
After e-mailing back and forth for a couple of days, Florence soon learned the details weren't free.
“He said he could only give me that information for a sum of $10,000” Florence recalls.
That’s when she got the police involved.
She soon learned of others who had received similar emails and quickly sent out a warning message through the Missouri Missing Web site.
“We've got to stop this, this is lower than I can even imagine,” says Florence. “It's despicable to do this to people when they've already gone through the most traumatic thing that they'll probably go through in their lives."
Florence says even though she's confident it was a scam, she still wonders if she should have paid money to learn more.
“I knew it was a scam from the very beginning, but I wanted to believe it,” Florence says.
The FBI says they are actively running back-traces trying to learn who sent the e-mails.
They couldn't tell me if were sent locally or from overseas like so many other e-mail scams.
But a quick read of the e-mails doesn’t reveal any odd English usage or grammar errors like typical foreign scam e-mails.
To read one of the e-mails you can visit the Missouri Missing website: www.missourimissing.org
