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 .”
Link: "FBI, This Week" ABC Radio Show Archives
