Imagine answering the telephone to hear an unknown voice with the bloodcurdling screams of your only daughter in the background. The callers voice is calm and cold “We have your daughter. Deposit $5,000 in account number 565-1243-1234-5678 within 30 minutes or you’ll never see your baby girl again” before the caller hangs up, you hear your daughter plead: “Papi, pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaase help me.” and the line goes dead. Imagine, the shock and dismay you must feel, when calming down and remembering you don’t have a daughter.

Mexico’s fastest growing crime racket is being primarily being run out of the big house, yup, you heard me right. Prison.

All an inmate needs is a cell phone — smuggled in with a reported $5,000 bribe to guards — and a list of potential victims. The criminals call at random, and the message rarely varies: “Hello, we’ve kidnapped your son/daughter/nephew. Pay up, or you will never see him again.”

According to the Federal Investigative Agency, which is Mexico’s equivilant to the F.B.I., 80 percent of the calls are made from inside prisons, often by experienced kidnappers who continue to ply their trade from behind bars.

Experts state the success rate of these extortioners is due to the fact that ransoms are relatively small and the victims are allowed absurdly small amounts of time to cooperate, leaving no time to investigate. Victims pay either by depositing money in specified bank accounts or buying cell phone cards and providing the callers with the access codes. The callers then use those cards to continue the extortion.

Last year, telephone companies began putting messages on all calls made from public phones inside prisons, alerting recipients of their origin. Prison authorities have also tried blocking cell phone service in prisons. But those efforts have largely failed, partly because neighbors have complained about losing their own service.

Phone extortioners also use “The Long Lost Family Member Living In the U.S.” trick to scam money off of innocent victims. Many Mexicans have at least one family member, distant or close, living in somewhere within the U.S., and many have recieved phone calls stating:

“Aunt/Uncle, This is your nephew, I’m trying to get back home, but I ran out of money. I’ve tried calling Mom and Dad and no one answers the phone, can you transfer/wire/deposit me $200 right away so I can catch the bus/plane, it’s leaving in 20 minutes.”

The last one is probably the scariest because once they have your personal info, you could be the target of a real kidnapping. You recieve a call/email/text message saying you have just won a new car, all you have to do is call the following number and answer a simple questionaire to be given the details on where and when to pick up your new ride. You call the number and are told you will need to answer a survey on education. First we will need your general infomation: Name, address, age, telephone, occupation, place of employment, marital status, name of spouse, and level of education. Next: How many kids do you have? How old are they? Do they go to private or public schools? What schools do they go to? Oh ya, I forgot, how would you rate the quality of their present academic institution, do you have any suggestions on bettering the schools in Mexico?... When all is done, you await the caller to tell you where to collect the keys to your new wheeles, but instead, the line goes dead. The caller now has not only your personal infomation, but also the ages and schools of your children, having your last name and your wife’s, it wouldn’t be difficult to get your children’s full names and from there God knows what.

Mexican officials are combating these crimes by initiating new cell phone guidelines. As of the 10th of this month, a new system will be implemented for the purchase and use of all cell phones. Buyers must provide all official identifications, a photo I.D., and fingerprints which will be placed in a national data base registry. Existing cell phone owners will be obligated to register their chips or have services cancelled.

The registry—passed by the Senate on December 9 along with other measures to widen police powers—mandates substantial changes to the way telecoms operate. But in the English-language media, the registry received just passing attention.

Its goal is laudable: to help police in cracking down on ransom demands made from often untraceable cell phones.

To accomplish that, the law requires all cell-phone users to show documentation and to submit a fingerprint to keep their phone or purchase a new one. This information will then be entered into a national database. Cell users that do not register their phone and/or phone memory chips will have service cut without the possibility for reactivation. Beyond that, cellular companies are now required to have the capability to identify the time, day and duration of any call. And this information must be turned over to federal authorities during an investigation. -AP

Efforts to pass the cell phone registry law began in 2007. The joint Citizen Public Security Council and Mexico City justice office, launched in January 2007, proposed the registry to facilitate its work aimed at stopping kidnappers and extortionists.

In just one year, the Council’s call center received 111,000 calls from citizens thought to be the victims of extortion. When someone calls, the Council, with support from the public ministry, sends a two-person team to the victim’s house to investigate. By snuffing out extortionists, the Council has helped citizens save approximately 539,980,000 pesos (US $40,585,000).

Of course new laws, raise new concerns. What about Telecom companies? It says the new law could actually result in “negative effects,” and possibly threaten users’ privacy and security. Criminals can still resort to public phones or the Internet or kidnap cell-phone owners and then use the phone for extortion purposes. This would just add to the number of people affected by these crimes. Oddly enough Telcel, Mexico’s largest mobile phone provider, which is owned by multibillionaire Carlos Slim, who just happens to also own the once state run, largest Telephone and Internet provider, TELMEX, has noted the importance of creating “clear rules to guarantee the protection of consumer information.” That’s wonderful, but somehow all the spam and odd calls of winnings I’ve ever received have come as a direct result of someone purchasing my phone/mobile/email from one of his companies, but Hey, that’s neither here nor there.

The fact is, it’s a sad day when a cell phone can prove to be just as damaging as an UZI.