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Woman fakes kidnapping to boost music career

The Local Spain
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Woman fakes kidnapping to boost music career
The woman confessed the kidnapping was a set-up and that she wanted the money to start her singing career Photo of a woman with her hands tied: Shutterstock"

A Barcelona woman has been arrested after allegedly faking her own kidnapping in the Dominican Republic to raise money to record a CD.

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The 22-year-old was arrested at Madrid airport on Thursday after staging her own kidnapping in the hope her father would hand over ransom money.

She has now been charged with extortion and faking a crime, Catalonia's Mossos d'Esquadra said in a statement. 

The arrest came after the woman's father approached police saying he had received a call from the Dominican Republic on August 15th in which he could hear his daughter crying while a man with a South American accent explained the young woman was in serious danger.

Catalan police then ascertained the daughter had travelled to the Dominican Republic on a one-way ticket.

Once there, she met up with the lover she had met online several months earlier.

Nothing more was heard from the pair until August 18th when the father received another call demanding he hand over €6,000 ($8,000) for the return of his daughter. There were more calls the following day.

In the intervening period, however, authorities in the Dominican Republic had helped identify the lover and supposed kidnapper. Just hours after the final phone call to the 'kidnapped' woman's father, police in the Dominican Republic found the pair, establishing the woman was with her 'kidnapper' voluntarily. 

The woman confessed the kidnapping was all a set-up and that she had wanted to raise cash for the production of a CD.

She wanted to be a singer, she told police. 

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