A bizarre kidnapping plot in Santiago, Chile, has left investigators stunned after prosecutors revealed that a Chinese brother and sister were abducted in broad daylight by a crew that went so far as to build a fake police station complete with a portrait of Donald Trump.
The ordeal began on August 6 when the brother, Fu Mingkai, met someone in downtown Santiago. Two men claiming to be Chilean investigative police suddenly slapped handcuffs on him and shoved him into a car.
What followed sounds straight out of a movie. The kidnappers took him to a basement meticulously decked out to look like a real police precinct. To pull off the illusion, the setup included fake cops, actors posing as detainees, and walls plastered with signs for the Chilean investigative police, the FBI, and a portrait of the former US president.
When the sister, Fu Mingxia, rushed to find her brother, the bogus law enforcement officers showed her a fabricated criminal organizational chart. They claimed the siblings were in deep trouble and demanded 300 million Chilean pesos—roughly 2.4 million yuan—to make the case go away.
The siblings managed to scrape together 30 million pesos just to get out. But the plot took an even darker turn when former prosecutor Vinko Fodich, who is implicated in the case, testified that the ransom was split among the gang, which reportedly included active-duty Chilean investigative police officers.
Even after coughing up the cash, the gang kept hounding the pair for the balance. Local prosecutors are cracking down hard on the operation, dragging a former prosecutor and a mix of current and former police officers into the net.
