A while back I wrote about some fraud alerts that had recently found. One from the FBI was about email death threats were they try and exhort money from the victims and that they might have a bunch of info but were from outside the US. The FBI suggested to just ignore it.

Now I mentioned that scam could easily move over to phone calls and it just so happens it did but with a scary twist. Earlier this month, 3 men one of whom, Olvin Velasquez, is under arrest, decided to perpetrate this crime on a local Austin family.

According to police, Olvin Velasquez and two other men (I use this term loosely) over the course of five days, repeatedly phoned an Austin woman and threatened to kill her or someone in her family if she didn’t pay tens of thousands of dollars. Now the twist I mentioned, they did these calls from a pay phone right in Austin! Reportedly they were actually following her and lived close by. Thankfully she was smart enough to report this to the police who traced it back to Velasquez who is a Honduran national here in Texas.

Police also said when the victim asked them why they were doing this to her they replied “This is how we make our living”. It has also been reported that this victim was the 7th one so they have done this 6 times before and it hasn’t been reported by anyone due to fear.

Bear this in mind, if you get an email making threats just report it but don’t reply, odds are extremely good they aren’t even in the US (they would most likely call to scare you more than email would).

BUT if you get a phone call like this, take it very serious because as this story shows, they might be right in your neighborhood. Immediately report it to the FBI so they can get things setup to trace and they will tell you what you need to do from there. This is a must, some law enforcement, either Federal or local needs to be involved so get these people off our streets.

/rant on

Real quick I need to tell you a story that hopefully will outrage you enough to get involved in any way you can. The problem, we are not properly protecting children who cannot protect themselves.

What I am referring to is a case here in Texas (but this issue is every place) where a thing named Melody Whatley and its mate Michael Denson are accused of child endangerment. Melody has already plead guilty and has been sentenced to one year and Denson’s trail is next. Sickening!

First I’ll give you some background on this thing called Melody. It has been in trouble with child protective services previously because two of its children, one of whom died, tested positive for marijuana at their birth. The one who died did so when this thing rolled over and smothered it to death while it was sleeping next to the poor baby.

In 2005 it was in trouble for violating its probation from a felony drug possession charge so it had to serve 9 months in jail. Somehow still having possession of the 3 babies that are still alive this thing gets in trouble once again because they tested all three of the kids and they came back positive for methamphetamines (ages 1, 2 and 3).

Now if all this wasn’t bad enough this thing will likely get her kids back once again when she gets out in a year!! What in the hell do you need to do to loose custody of your kids? How many screw ups should one get? Why do we not do more for our children?

I am not a parent but I am still outraged that this could take place and have started contacting local legislators to express my disgust. ANYONE who would do drugs in front of their children no longer deserves the privilege of raising them. Drug use is no excuse! These kids didn’t ask to be brought into this world and anyone who would put drugs before their children (like doing drugs while pregnant) needs to loose their kids and be sterilized! This thing in this story and its mate should both be neutered so they can never harm any other children.

Sad part is this story happens all over the US over and over again and has for quite some time. It is our responsibility as adults to protect those that cannot protect themselves… our little ones.

/rant off

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Child Safety, Crime, Home Security | . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.