Audio Transcript

Mr. Schiff: The FBI’s Criminal Investigative and Cyber Divisions are investigating threatening telephone calls to Chinese-Americans living and working in the United States.

Mr. Phillips: “Monetary demands have been anything from maybe $10,000 to $50,000. They’re usually round numbers.”

Mr. Schiff: Special Agent Dean Phillips. He’s chief of the FBI’s Asian-African Criminal Enterprise Unit and says more than a thousand calls have been made, apparently from China.

Mr. Phillips: "An example might be, ‘You need to give us $20,000, or we’re going to beat up a family member. Or we’re going to kidnap a child or a sibling.’”

Mr. Schiff: Phillips says the FBI first heard about the calls in San Francisco but now other cities are receiving them.

Mr. Phillips: “Los Angeles, New York, Boston picked up on it, and then we saw it in Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Miami.”

Mr. Schiff: Phillips says because a lot of people are making these threatening calls the FBI considers this organized crime. I’m Neal Schiff of the Bureau, and that’s what’s happening at the “FBI, This Week .”