Amy Bradley family break silence on $200,000 scammer left out of Netflix doc

Amy Bradley’s family have broken a long silence on a scammer who took over $200,000 (£147,513) from the family yet was surprisingly left out of the Netflix documentary.

Amy Bradley disappeared 27 years ago in 1998 after going missing from aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.

This led to Netflix’s new documentary, Amy Bradley is Missing, which was a massive success for the streamer.

It has also led to new leads arising after people worldwide learn more about the case - some of which are horrifying - which the family hope will lead to her being found.

One of the main details not included in the Netflix documentary, however, is a sad incident in which a man named Frank Jones contacted the family claiming to be a former US Navy Seal.

Jones claimed that he had a crack team of former US Navy Seals and Army Rangers at his disposal and that, if the family fund him, he would go to Curaçao and retrieve Amy.

Amy Bradley has been missing for 27 years and was declared legally dead in 1999 (Netflix)

The scammer sent the family several doctored photos he claimed were of Amy, and went as far as to tell them to wait by the phone because they were initiating an operation to bring her home.

Jones claimed that they had spotted her multiple times and were set to enter a house they knew she was in, however a member of his team overheard him updating Amy’s family.

This team member knew that they were being asked to surveil an empty house for seemingly no reason, so called Amy’s family to inform them.

In his time conning Amy’s family, Jones scammed them out of $24,444 (£18,032) in personal savings and $186,416 (£137,518) from a fund set up by a nonprofit called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The family commented on this at the time of his conviction when he was sentenced to five years in prison, however have rarely commented on the case since then.

Brad Bradley, Amy’s brother, spoke out about this in a new interview with BIGPLAY Cleveland.

Amy's brother Brad was featured in the Netflix documentary and has since spoken to a Cleveland radio show about the new leads (Netflix)

One of the hosts asked how hard it can be to decipher what are genuine sightings vs fake ones, with Brad responding saying that the family had been on ‘that rollercoaster’ hundreds of times.

He went on to say: “Back in the day, I don’t know if you know about Frank Jones, the guy who conned us out of $200,000+ claiming to be a special forces guy.

“We were actually in a hotel room down in Fort Lauderdale that we flew down to and had a private jet on standby because he was down in the islands with this team of operators.

“They ‘knew’ where Amy was. They were tracking the people that were ‘in control of her’. They went as far as to stencil tattoos on a woman and send pictures of her sitting on the beach with one of her alleged captors.

The family were defrauded out of over $200,000 in their search (Netflix)

“We ended up having a good a guy who's been with us ever since that outed that guy Frank Jones for being a fraud… I mean we thought we had her.

“So those kinds of things, you know, you have people come out of the woodwork.”

The family had spoken about how they were put off using private investigators for years as a result of this incident, however have recently revealed that they hired private investigators to investigate a ‘verified sighting’ of Amy by a former Curaçao police officer.

Amy Bradley is Missing is available to watch on Netflix now.