Damascus: In a strange incident, a 20-year-old Syrian boy faked his own abduction to extract a ransom of 30 million Syrian pounds from his father, local media reported.
The young boy sent a message from an unknown number on WhatsApp to his parents in which he claimed he had kidnapped their son and demanded that they pay 30 million Syrian pounds in exchange for the boy’s release.
In its statement, the Syrian Ministry of Interior said, “A citizen reported to the Criminal Security Branch in Lattakia that his son Mahmoud, born in 2000, had been kidnapped by unknown people, and messages were received from an unknown number claiming to be the kidnappers asking for a ransom of thirty million Syrian pounds in exchange for his release,” Gulf News reported.
The Syrian CID officers, in collaboration with the young boy’s parents, set up a trap to arrest the kidnappers. They lured them to a place to give the ransom to them.
However, when the kidnappers showed up to take the money, it turned out that the kidnapped boy himself was the kidnapper and was just faking the entire incident due to a dispute with his parents and his need for money.
The son then confessed that he had “fabricated the fictitious kidnapping incident with the intention of obtaining the ransom amount.”
