Spanish woman arrested for faking kidnapping to fund singing career

Madrid: A 22-year-old young Spanish woman faked her own kidnapping to try to get ransom money from her father to record a music album, police said today. The woman flew to Santo Domingo without telling her family on August 14 to meet a man she had started chatting with online a few months earlier, police said in a statement. [caption id=“attachment_1678211” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] The next day the woman’s father received a telephone call at his home in Anoia in the northeastern region of Catalonia informing him that his daughter had been kidnapped. “The man could hear his daughter crying and the voice of a man with a South American accent warning him that the young woman’s life was in danger,” the statement said. The alleged kidnapper called the woman’s father again three days later to demand $8,000 for her safe return. Once again the woman could be heard crying in the background. The woman’s father then called Spanish police who searched through her social media sites and identified the 23-year-old man she had travelled to the Caribbean island to meet. They then contacted police in the Dominican Republican who quickly found the pair who confessed they faked the kidnapping. “The woman admitted that it was all a ploy to obtain money from the father to produce a record since she wanted to be a singer,” the police statement said. Police arrested the woman when she arrived at Madrid airport yesterday. She was charged with extortion and faking a crime. AFP