CARLSBAD (KGTV) -- A Carlsbad woman went through what she calls her worst nightmare on Friday. Men on the other end of the phone, claiming they had her daughter and demanding money for her safe return.
Unfortunately, she believed them.
"It sounded just like her it was my worst nightmare come true," Dale Schwab told 10News. She says she was on her way to have lunch with her daughter when her phone rang.
"I heard a young woman, panicked voice which sounded like my daughter saying 'mom, mom, mom! A man grabbed me a man grabbed me and took me!'" Schwab said, adding that a man took over the call as the woman she thought was her daughter screamed in the background.
"He got on the phone and said your daughter was in the wrong place at the wrong time she saw something she shouldn't she screamed and so we had to take her too," Schwab said. "He goes we can do this the easy way or the hard way, I can take her to Mexico and get a lot of money for her or you save both of us some time and just give me some money and we'll drop her off somewhere."
The man instructed her to pay him through money gram -- refused to let her talk to her daughter and told her he had hacked into her phone.
She realized it was a scam when her real daughter called to ask why she missed lunch.
"I hung up on that guy and he had the nerve to call me back why'd you hang up?" she said.
She says she's always known before when scammers call -- but this one was different because it played on her heart.
"I lost my daughter I was in a panic," she said. "You're almost willing to do anything."
Schwab says the one thing she wishes she had done differently was to ask the man to describe her daughter. In all, she lost $1,900.
