Chinese-Americans Receive Phone Threats

File type: MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (audio/mpeg) Track length: 06:05 (mm:ss) Chinese-Americans Receive Phone Threats 05/22/2009 Play in popup window | Stream Audio | Play Local/Download   Mr. Schiff: Hello I’m Neal Schiff and welcome to Inside the FBI, a weekly podcast about news, cases, and operations. Investigations are underway across the United States of telephone threats to Chinese-Americans. Mr. Phillips: “We really hope that they’ll reach out to their law enforcement; local law enforcement to report it. They can also reach out to their local FBI office; we’ve got 56 field divisions across the country.” Mr. Schiff: That’s FBI Special Agent Dean Phillips. He’s the Chief of the Asian-African Criminal Enterprise Unit in the Organized Crime Section which is part of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. Mr. Phillips: “ What we’ve seen so far is a number of phone calls to primarily Chinese business owners. The phone calls are coming in and threatening bodily harm to them or their family members.” Mr. Schiff: Any thoughts on where these calls are coming from and and who might be doing it? Mr. Phillips: “It seems like right now that the calls are being made through Voiceover Internet Protocol and the calls actually would be actually originating from China .” Mr. Schiff: Are we aware that these calls are human to human or are they recorded calls coming in to people here in this country? Mr. Phillips: “The description of the phone calls from victims, it sounds like it’s actually a person-to-person conversation. It’s not a recorded call. It’s a conversation like you and I would be having .” Mr. Schiff: What are some of the things being said by those who are apparently in China to Chinese people here in this country? Mr. Phillips: “It’s mostly threats of bodily harm to themselves or their family members .” Mr. Schiff: We don’t know the source so we don’t know if it’s an organized thing coming from overseas or whether it’s just a few individuals doing this, right? Mr. Phillips: “Well at this point we’re actually approaching it as organized crime simply because the volume of calls really requires several people to be involved. It isn’t just one or two people that could be doing all these phone calls. Furthermore, when you look at the activity itself—extortion, threats of violence—those are traditional organized crime, racketeering-type activities. And the purpose of which is certainly to gain money, go gain assets. And those are all definitions of what we call organized crime. So we’re looking at it right now as organized crime .” Read more at The FBI