The kidnapping epidemic that has plagued South Africa this decade may have hit a new criminal low when an American pastor was nabbed at gunpoint while he was preaching at a Baptist church in Motherwell, outside the coastal city of Gqeberha.
A Pennsylvania man has been sentenced for faking his own mafia kidnapping to scam ransom money out of his victims.
A migrant illegally present in the United States is in a Texas jail charged with kidnapping a Guatemalan migrant woman and holding her for ransom. He reportedly forced the woman to perform labor to work off her smuggling debt.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian claims he has reached a “good understanding” with Qatar for access to the $6 billion windfall of cash paid by President Joe Biden after a prisoner exchange deal with the United States in September 2023.
Two Honduran illegal migrants living in New Mexico have been charged for allegedly conspiring to kidnap other migrants to extort their families for ransom, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said Monday.
An FBI raid led to the rescue of four migrants being held for ransom by suspected human smugglers in southeast Houston on April 3. The alleged smugglers demanded $15,000 from family members for the release of the migrants, a victim’s family member reported.
Gunmen who kidnapped 286 students and staff from a school in Nigeria are threatening to kill the hostages unless a ransom is paid.
Officials say a 17-year-old exchange student from China who was the victim of a cyber kidnapping was located safe on Sunday in the mountains outside Salt Lake City, Utah.
Fingerprints from a ransom note were key in locating a 9-year-old girl who vanished during a camping trip with her family at a state park in New York Saturday, officials said.
Republican officials blasted the Biden administration for paying a $6 billion “ransom” to the Islamic regime on the anniversary of 9/11.
According to Iranian state media, President Joe Biden’s lopsided hostage deal with Tehran includes both a $6 billion ransom payment and releasing five Iranians jailed in the United States for sanctions violations, in exchange for five American hostages to be released by Iran. The Biden White House has said very little on the record about the deal, but Voice of America News (VOA) on Thursday put together a list of 11 Iranians who might be released as part of the deal.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Monday it could take up to two months to complete the “process” of releasing five American hostages after President Joe Biden’s reported $6 billion ransom payment.
Republican senators are demanding “answers” after the Biden administration struck a deal with the Iranian regime to transfer five Iranian Americans from prison to house arrest in exchange for billions in unfrozen assets.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry said Friday it had “no information” about President Joe Biden’s plan to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian assets from South Korean banks to pay ransom for five American hostages.
On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby claimed that the reported unfreezing of $6 billion in assets with some limits in exchange for Iran releasing five detained Americans “is not
A Texas man pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to luring a teen to Mexico where he and other gunmen kidnapped him and tortured him while demanding ransom from his family. The Texas man also has a long criminal history tying him to a deadly home invasion and numerous robberies.
Gunmen identified as “bandits” by Nigerian officials kidnapped over 100 people from four northeastern villages on Sunday, possibly for ransom or use as human shields against Nigerian military operations.
State and federal law enforcement agencies teamed up to arrest an alleged human smuggler in West Texas who reportedly held a migrant toddler for ransom. The arrest followed a traffic stop by a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper working under Operation Lone Star.
A Nigerian Christian leader admitted his church paid a $240,000 ransom to secure his release from unidentified kidnappers after he was abducted in recent days, Voice of America (VOA) reported on Wednesday.
A group of unidentified Nigerian terrorists released a video on Monday appearing to show hostages abducted from a passenger train attacked by the terror group on March 28, Africnews reported.
Saudi Aramco confirmed on Wednesday that a “limited amount” of its company data held by third-party contractors was recently leaked amid reports that an unidentified extortionist is holding a terabyte of the Saudi Arabian oil giant’s data hostage and demanding a $50 million ransom for its deletion, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Bloomberg News reported Thursday that the Colonial Pipeline paid the nearly $5 million ransom fee in untraceable cryptocurrency.
Suspected members of an armed gang called 400 Mawozo abducted ten people in Haiti on Sunday: two religious sisters, five priests, and three family members of one of the priests.
Teachers at several schools in France have received death threats, stating that unless they pay cash, they will be killed like Samuel Paty.
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Greek police said Sunday they have arrested three men of Pakistani origin for keeping seven people, including an Afghan family of four, whom they had helped cross into Greece, hostage and demanding money to release them.
A senior Iranian political strategist and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officer Hassan Abbasi suggested in a video surfacing Thursday taking Americans hostage and demanding ransoms to make up the losses caused by U.S. economic sanctions.
President Donald Trump reacted Monday to critics who had rallied around former U.S. envoy Brett McGurk, noting that he was the Obama administration official responsible for sending pallets of cash to Iran for U.S. hostages.
An Ohio man with multiple facial tattoos racked up his 54th arrest this Tuesday after police charged him with allegedly kidnapping a woman and holding her for ransom.
The Assyrian Church in Syria may have paid more than a million dollars to the Islamic State (ISIS) in extortion fees, the New York Times claimed in a report Wednesday.
A viral video of 26-year-old Amber Neal being arrested by LAPD officers captures the sound of onlookers being shocked by the show of force involved.
A new report from the Wall Street Journal found that the Trump administration secretly reached out to the Iranian regime in December and proposed creating a direct channel with them to negotiate for the release of U.S. and Iranian nationals being held by both countries in what would be a potential prisoner swap.
Federal prosecutors have slapped an Iranian national with criminal charges for hacking HBO and prematurely releasing several Game of Thrones scripts and episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, in addition to private executive emails.
A new report has indicated that officials at the Department of Justice are preparing to announce several cases against Iranian suspects which include charges that said individuals hacked HBO, in a move that could motivate Congress to impose new sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Hackers have stolen Disney’s upcoming film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and have threatened to release it online unless the studio pays the thieves a hefty ransom, according to reports.
Russian hackers demanded ransom money from over a dozen Democratic groups over protester funding information, according to a report.
Hillary Clinton dodged the question at the community-in-chief forum of whether she would use military force or negotiations if Iran cheated on the nuclear deal.
On Tuesday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) introduced legislation to prevent and ensure that the United States will never again makes ransom payments, or other cash payouts, to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It would have been unthinkable, 15 years ago, for any American politician to back sending $1.7 billion to Iran’s military. Yet Clinton does. That alone disqualifies her as commander-in-chief.
A $400 million cash delivery to Iran to repay a decades-old arbitration claim may be unprecedented in recent U.S. history, according to legal experts and diplomatic historians, raising further questions about a payment timed to help free four American prisoners in Iran.
How is it that President Barack Obama’s approval ratings have been so favorable of late, now cracking 50 percent?