419 - Made in Ghana

Man gets ransom note for missing mother

A Seattle man has received an email ransom demand relating to his mother, Patty Krieger, who vanished in October 2010. Alan Patterson received the message along with a demand for $250,000 to be sent to a man in Ghana. The email is being treated as a scam.

Patty Krieger was hiking with friends on Sauk Mountain when she disappeared on October 2nd 2010. Despite extensive searches, she has never been found. The email claimed that she was being held captive and that a finger could be supplied as proof.

With the Ghana connection, it looks like the email is a rather adventurous variant on the traditional online email scam. Needless to say, Patterson won’t be sending the $250,000 to Ghana. But he is keeping up the search for his mother, even though she is now almost certainly dead.