Crims using social media images, videos in 'virtual kidnapping' scams

Criminals are altering social media and other publicly available images of people to use as fake proof of life photos in "virtual kidnapping" and extortion scams, the FBI warned on Friday. 

In these truly heinous extortion attempts, miscreants contact their victims via text messages and claim to have kidnapped their loved one. 

Some of these are totally fake, and don't involve any abducted people. However, the FBI's Friday alert also warns about posting real missing person info online, indicating that scammers may also be scraping these images and contacting the missing person's family with fake information.

The moves are similar to the age-old grandparent scams, in which fraudsters call seniors and impersonate their children or grandchildren, purporting to be in great physical danger if the grandparent doesn't send needed money ASAP. The FBI classifies this type of fraud as "emergency scams," [PDF] and says it received ...