Philadelphia Police Department outlines the steps you should take if a phone scammer calls you saying that a loved one has been kidnapped, demanding a ransom

The Philadelphia Police Department issued a warning this week for citizens to be on alert for a recent influx of phone scammers were making calls claiming a loved one has been kidnapped and ultimately, demanding a ransom to be paid to return them safely. 

The Philly PD made it clear that these are hoaxes and that no abductions have occurred. They also outlined the steps to avoid being a victim of the phone scams, saying that you should never send money, immediately hang up, call 911, and then check on your loved one. 

Philadelphia Police Department Phone Scam Warning

🚨 SCAM ALERT: We're seeing a recent rise in phone scams where callers claim a loved one has been kidnapped and demand a ransom. These are hoaxes! No abductions have occurred!

If you get a call like this:

* Do not send money
* Hang up + call 911
* Check on your loved one

— Philadelphia Police Department (@PhillyPolice) November 11, 2025

Look, I don’t want to be too hard on the Philly PD here. I’m sure their intentions are in the right place but there’s a lot of things that are worth pointing out here. The “victims” have a lot of blame in this entire debacle too. 

Honestly, the tweet in general feels like a scam so naturally, I have questions. 

• Are the phone scammers hiring? 
• Who is dumb enough to call 911?
• Why is anyone calling 911 to begin with? 

Outside of that, the steps, if you choose to follow them, seem out of order. 

I would never take the the scammer seriously to begin with so unfortunately, if it actually was a serious situation, they aren’t getting ransom money from me, assuming that I even had any money to give.

I’m literally writing an article about this stupid shit with the hope of making a few bucks off website ads courtesy of your clicks.

How the hell am I going to pay a ransom to save my little brother’s life?

If I did decide to play along, my first course of action is calling or texting my family member who has been allegedly kidnapped.

Outside of that, I’m really not doing anything at all for 24-48 hours.

Once that time has passed, I’m probably going to call the alleged kidnapped family member again and wait another two days before doing anything, and then call a non-kidnapped family member to hear if they heard from them… and then wait even more time while they spend a few days trying to get in contact.

Now we’re in a never ending cycle of follow ups and there’s literally zero dollars being paid to the phone scammer.

If I did get a response, my family would probably tell me that they were in fact kidnapped just to fuck with me. That’s just the type of relationship that we have, ya know?

Hell, I have told every single person here at The Liberty Line that when we inevitably sell this website and become rich, that I would disappear off the face of the earth and come back five years later to kill them and their entire families anyways.

I wouldn’t know if it was true or not until the next family gathering or holiday. 

See what I’m saying? It’s legitimately baffling that anyone would fall for anything these phone scammers are selling and it gets even crazier when you decide to get the cops involved. 911 is literally the last number I would call in this situation, if ever at all.

The more I write about this, I have a lot of phone scammer tendencies and it goes right back to my very first question… are the phone scammers hiring? 

Join The Chase