Police in Johnson County are warning residents about a new phone scam.

In this scam, people get a phone call from a thief who claims to have kidnapped their mother and will kill her if they don’t pay them over the phone immediately.

A Johnson County woman says in the call she got, she heard a woman screaming in the background — a woman she believed, in her panic, was her real mother.

The thieves conned the woman out of $1,500.

Police say they’ve gotten reports of similar scam attempts around the state.