ON HALLOWEEN two weeks ago, my mother was scared to tears. And it had nothing to do with trick-or-treaters in hideous costumes.
Alone at home, she had received a phone call from a Mandarin-speaking man claiming that he had kidnapped my younger brother.
"Mama! Quick, come and save me!" sobbed what sounded like a hysterical young man on the line. The fierce 'kidnapper' then took the phone back and demanded that my mother cough up $12,000 for her son's release. Fail to pay, and he would beat her offspring senseless, he threatened.
Unable to contact my brother - who is a young adult - on his mobile phone, my poor mother assumed the worst, and rang me up in a panic.
Luckily, I had spoken to my brother just moments ago and knew for sure that he was safe.
I rushed to my mother's side in five minutes. Although no financial transaction had taken place, we lodged a report at the nearest police station. Later, my mum recounted to the family that one of the things the phone scammer had said to scare her was that he was going to administer an injection to his victim, rendering him a chi chi dai dai (Mandarin for "mentally- disabled" or "moron").
"What kind of injection is that? How can it make someone mentally-disabled?" I asked as it became increasingly clear how loopy the conman's story was.
"You should have just told him that your son is already chi chi dai dai," my brother said later at home, in a self-deprecating bid to cheer our mum up.
It seems that hearing about such scams and actually having to deal with them are two entirely different things.
My mother herself had warned me about these same kidnap phone scams, having read about them in the newspapers. But, when confronted with a harrowing voice performance put on by the unethical crooks, all reason fled.
We're talking here about women who wake up in a cold sweat wondering if their teenagers are okay on nights when the youngsters are partying until the wee hours of the morning. So what more when you shatter their peace of mind by posing as a bogeyman with an axe over their precious children's necks?
I wondered what I would have done if someone had used the same tactics on me. For the next few days, I kept my two-year-old son very close to me indeed.
Perhaps the best defence, especially for those of us who are lucky enough to still be sons and daughters to living parents, is to do them a favour and check in with them often. Even if it's only by phone.
It's the only way to foil these crooks from preying on and traumatising our family.
