Son stages his own kidnapping

JOHOR BARU - Saddled with debts, a 25-year-old part-time worker decided to fake his own kidnapping in order to get money from his father.

Johor Baru (South) OCPD Asst Comm Zainuddin Yaacob said police received a report from the 61-year-old father that "loan sharks" had kidnapped his son and demanded a RM3,000 (S$1194.93) ransom on July 17.

An investigation team was immediately formed to track down the victim.

"Within hours, police managed to trace the cellphone that was used to contact the father and to their surprise, the number was registered to the victim.

"Based on information and further investigations, police located the kidnapped' victim at a house in Taman Cahaya Masai in Pasir Gudang," he told reporters at the district police headquarters here yesterday.

ACP Zainuddin said the suspect admitted that he had faked his own kidnapping in order to get money from his father.

"The son wanted the money as he owed quite a number of people," he said, adding that the suspect was arrested for stealing money from a restaurant recently.

In an unrelated case, police arrested a 17-year-old school dropout for attempting to extort RM5,000 from his former girlfriend's brother by threatening to expose explicit videos of her.

ACP Zainuddin said the suspect threatened to upload the videos on the Internet if her brother did not pay up.

"We arrested the suspect on Friday at 2.05am in Taman Kim Teng here and seized a smartphone together with a SIM card that supposedly contains the videos," he said.